


Or Forever Hold Your Peace

by FireSoul



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: Leonard Snart Lives, Multi, Some angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 46,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24456691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireSoul/pseuds/FireSoul
Summary: When Leonard Snart finds himself as a part of the living world again he finds that a lot has changed, including Sara Lance. She has someone now, someone she is about to commit to for the rest of her life, and he has no intentions of messing that up for her.He is, apparently, the only one looking at it that way.
Relationships: Sara Lance/Leonard Snart
Comments: 297
Kudos: 172





	1. April 15th, 2021

Mona’s eyes feel heavy as she opens them, her vision bleary as her bedroom comes into focus around her. She rolls to her side and reaches to her nightstand for her phone. Holding down the side button her lock screen clicks to life and shows her it is just after 8:30. She yawns, puts the phone back, and rolls onto her back while kicking the blanket down just enough to motivate her. She’s never really been one to linger in bed for hours on end, she still isn’t, but a few minutes never hurt anyone.

She only takes that long, as she has a double shift later and if she wants to get any writing done today she should get it done now. When she took over as Rebecca Silver she set up an account for any earnings, unlike Mick who transferred everything to cash soon as he got it. But she’s yet to publish anything, so for right now she’s back to her delivery job.

She gets up, retrieves her laptop from her desk, and then climbs back into bed and sits up against her headboard. Soon as she opens the laptop her word document of a whopping two pages in chapter four is there to greet her.

_Buck stared ahead, having long since stopped piloting. He was headed off on another bounty…_

Yes, but where was his next bounty taking him? She’s found that she isn’t nearly as good at world building as Mick. Creating different planets and cultures residing on them had been something he was always able to make look easy. When she took over she told Mick she was going to travel. At the time she figured she would save some money while working on the book and if she got stumped she would find some time to take a weekend off and take a day trip somewhere.

It isn’t that she doesn’t have _any_ money saved up. But really, where is she going to go on a bike? That travel money needs to go towards a car, and the travel will have to wait until after she finishes her first book, which hopefully she’ll make some money off of.

At this rate it isn’t looking too likely.

She’s on chapter four, but if she’s being honest with herself she doesn’t like chapters 1-3. They make sense, but they’re boring and frankly by chapter four she barely has a plot.

She alternates for the next half hour between staring at the document and scrolling mindlessly through the Internet. At that point she’s hungry, so she closes her laptop and takes it with her into the kitchen. She grabs a banana off her counter then heads into her living area, settles herself in the corner of the couch, and scrolls through the Internet while eating her breakfast.

By the time she needs to get ready for work she has written all of three words, and she doesn’t like them. The prospect of going to work is almost a relief. It would be a relief – not and almost - if her job weren’t what it is. Riding around on her bike making deliveries.

She remembers a point in which she loved it. She could spend every day being lost in the bliss of her thoughts. She could think about the latest twist in whatever book she was reading at the time, and daydream about what it might be like if her own life could suddenly be plunged into adventure.

The thing is she got exactly what she wished for.

Getting trapped in the Time Bureau with Gary on Thanksgiving, meeting the Legends, meeting Konane and then becoming half Kaupe herself. That was adventure beyond her wildest dreams.

And yet she can’t seem to think up even one single story to base off it.

Maybe there is such a thing as too much adventure. Everything she has ever experienced from the moment she was pulled into the world of the Legends has been one thing: unbelievable. Time travel, magical creatures, a book that brings it’s writing to life, a love God, the list could go on and on. It was all so off the walls. What she needs now is something grounded, more real, to base her story in. What she needs is emotional stakes, and if she learned one thing from the Legends it’s that superheroes are notoriously emotionally constipated.

So she goes to work with that swimming through her mind, and as she bikes through the hills of Washington D.C. making her deliveries she tries to come up with something for her story.

At some point in the day her thoughts switch over to her aching legs and the idea of getting back on the job search. Just the notion of that is more than enough to bring her already cruddy mood down considerably. She’s had job interviews since she’s been back from time traveling, and every single one of them has been either a scam or selling life insurance.

Then of course, because it’s her and she’s already ticked off with her life going nowhere fast, one of her deliveries takes it upon itself to knock her down another peg.

At first it seems like a delivery she might actually like. The bag has a kid’s meal in it and she always likes delivering to houses with kids. She loves kids, and she’s found that while half are shy and want nothing to do with the delivery woman, the other half are overly friendly and thrilled at a new person visiting their house.

The house is in a decent suburb, in the middle of the street and a duplex. She goes to the left side door and rings the doorbell, and when it opens her bright smile falters for a second.

Dawn Granger, someone she sort of knew in high school.

Dawn Granger, with a toddler peeking out from behind her legs.

Dawn looks shocked for half a second before she smiles and laughs.

“Hey, how are you?”

In the blink of an eye Mona has a bright smile back on her face and she makes sure her voice is excited going into her words.

“Hey! I’m good. How are you?”

“Good. Hank and I got married last year.”

“Oh my God, congratulations!” Mona interrupts and Dawn smiles, tucking a strand of freshly-dyed silver hair behind her ear and looking down to the little girl peeking out from behind her legs before placing that hand to the back of her head.

“And this is Donna. She’s two.”

Mona gives an exaggerated gasp, putting on an even bigger smile for the little girl.

“She’s adorable!” She coos, and that part of all this isn’t an act. Donna is without a doubt the cutest little thing she has ever seen.

Beaming at the compliment for her daughter Dawn then takes the food from Mona and pays the tab, even giving her a tip, and while this is happening Donna has now taken interest in the visitor.

“Bike!” She suddenly exclaims, so sudden that Mona whirls her head back around, to be expectedly met by the sight of her bike with it’s neon streamers and bright pink basket at the helm.

Her shoulders deflate but she keeps up the smile.

“That’s right.” She says, turning back to Donna. “That’s my bike.”

“Donna loves anything pink.” Dawn explains, lifting her daughter onto her hip. “And we should be getting to our lunch. It was good to see you. I’ll DM you… Do I have you on Instagram?”

“I think so.” Mona says, grasping through her mind for the answer, and she’s pretty sure Dawn does not have her on Instagram. “I took a break from it for awhile. I’ll go through mine and add you if I don’t have you.”

“Great, bye, good to see you.”

“You too!”

She waves as Dawn closes the door, and then once the door is closed immediately her shoulders sink even more. She groans, and stomps back to her stupid bike off to make her next stupid delivery.

“My life is a joke.” She grumbles, clamoring back onto bike and kicking the kickstand back into place.

She pedals off and gets about one house away before she starts venting to herself about her life, and the joke that it is.

“I mean it’s not like I want kid or to be married right now, but something would be nice! An idea, a job that doesn’t involve riding around on my stupid unicorn poop bike.”

She stops at the end of the street, intending to look both ways so she can cross, but instead she just glares down angrily at her bike.

“Why did I think this was a good idea?!”

* * *

Her day doesn’t get any better as it goes on, though by now she’s figured out that is par for the course when you’re deep in a pit of self loathing. So it’s no wonder tonight is the night her back wheel turns and tears up the skin of her ankle repeatedly as she’s lugging the bike up the stairs to her apartment.

She’s growling, huffing, and half sure her ankle is bleeding by the time she reaches her apartment. She unlocks the door, uses the bike to push it open, and promptly jumps in her place when she sees her apartment isn’t empty.

“Mick?” She asks, walking the bike into her apartment and closing the door behind her. “What are you doing here?”

Her mentor is standing in her kitchen; a beer that she knows didn’t come from her fridge sat on the counter between his hands.

“I need your help.” He says, and it might be his low voice, his downcast eyes, or the fact that he said “I”, but something gives her the suspicion that he isn’t here on behalf of the Legends.

“Ok…” She trails, “What is it?”

She should’ve expected his lack of an answer. Instead he walks around her island counter and past her, out the front door.

She only takes the time to lean her bike against the wall and check her ankle, which thankfully is not bleeding, and then she follows.

* * *

She sits strapped into the back of the jump ship while Mick pilots. She isn’t good at quiet, but that happens to be Mick’s strongest area, and so far he hasn’t been willing to forgo it even to tell her where they’re going.

She hasn’t felt the bolt of a time jump yet, nor has the scenery through the window changed from the endless brightness of the blue sky, so they’re not even going to the temporal zone.

“Is everyone ok?”

There’s a beat, as there almost always is with Mick when he’s the one causing the tension.

“Yeah.” He huffs, “No one’s dead.”

Ok… So that’s the scale they’re measuring on.

“Is it something with your daughter?”

“No.” He snaps, “Lita’s fine. Things are great.”

Despite the bark that doesn’t sound like a lie, and she smiles to herself. She’s about to say that that’s great, and maybe ask what he and Lita have been up to, but she doesn’t get the chance.

The ship starts touching down; the engine’s quieting to a hum and the blue of the sky turns to white as they descend through the clouds. A city comes into view, bright with the sunlight of a late evening, and soon they touchdown on the flat roof of a tall building.

“Where are we?” She asks as they disembark from the ship, and Mick makes his way for a door at the corner of the roof.

“Central City.”

She hurries after Mick, almost needing to jog to keep up.

“What’s going on?”

Mick sighs as he opens the door, pauses for a minute, and then ducks through the door and starts leading the way down the stairs.

“Rebecca Silver needs to pull an idiot’s head out of his ass.”

She furrows her brow. “But you were Rebecca Silver before me.”

“This moron won’t listen to me, I’ve tried.”

She wants to ask what makes him so sure this person will listen to her if not him, especially since as far as the world is concerned he is the only Rebecca Silver there’s ever been.

As far as she’s concerned too.

The building they’re in is an apartment complex and they walk all the way down to the second floor, her trailing quietly behind him. When Mick finally stops in front of a door it somehow isn’t a surprise to her that he pulls out a key and unlocks the door. Inside the apartment there is a light on in the kitchen but no sign of anyone here, and judging by the way Mick growls she’s guessing that’s a disappointment.

“Get out here.” He calls into the apartment, “Now.”

Mona barely has time to look confused before another man comes trudging out the doorway at the other end of the main living area, which she assumes leads to a bedroom and a bathroom.

The man looks very, very irritated by their presence in what is clearly his dwelling; though he only gives her a half-hearted once over before settling his tired glare back on Mick.

“What?” He asks, his voice every bit as unimpressed as his expression.

He’s older, close to Mick’s age by the looks of it. He’s dressed in dark jeans and an even darker sweater, which after a moment of staring she realizes looks a little funny on him because the left sleeve hangs limp with no arm to fill it out.

“You want me to give up?” Mick asks the man, walking deeper into the apartment.

“I’d appreciate it.” The man says, still glaring at Mick.

“Fine. Tell her.”

The man flits his eyes over to her, his right arm moving to lie across his middle like it would be crossed judgmentally with his left if he had such a limb. He soon moves his glare back to Mick, silently asking for explanation.

She wouldn’t mind such a thing.

But Mick, clearly the only one here with all the facts, shrugs nonchalantly and starts for the more living room area of the apartment.

“Mona here’s got a moral compass to a fault.” He explains, sinking down onto the edge of the couch. “Hopeless lovebird too, and friends with the suit. You tell her everything and she takes your side, I’ll let it go.”

Mona wants to protest, or at the very least to ask what is going on here, and the mystery man rolls his eyes in response to Mick’s proposal.

Then he looks to her.

His eyes are squinted and… there is something in them almost akin to hope. There’s conflict too, like he doesn’t know what he’s hoping for. Suddenly she feels so tiny in this room, squished under all the pressure of something intangible. Something serious is happening, and somehow she is supposed to be the deciding factor.

“You want to hear a story kid?” The mystery man asks, and the only thing she can think to do is shrug.

“Sure.”

He nods; apparently her answer is acceptable.

However instead of explaining he slowly turns and starts walking partway around the rickety coffee table in front of the couch and takes a seat on the edge.

He still doesn’t start this story right away. He waits, until she takes the hint and hurries deeper into the room. She passes by him and settles onto the end of the couch opposite Mick, and even after she’s settled he doesn’t start right away.

Then, finally, he takes a breath.

“I’m assuming you know about the Legends.” He says and she nods.

He’s looking out ahead, and the next breath he takes is shuddering.

“Well, at the beginning, I was one. My name is Leonard Snart…”


	2. January 21st, 2020

Leonard blinks his eyes open in response to the morning sunlight. The white blinds on the window are unwavering, with bright rays of light shining through the cracks and onto off white walls and a tile floor, illuminating a few dust particles floating in the air.

Where is he?

He rolls his head to have a look around the room. It’s small, with a nightstand of cheap wood and plastic at his right side, and a slightly larger tabletop folded down attached to a wheeling stand of metal next to it. A faint beeping alerts him to the heart monitor on his left, which he somehow didn’t noticed hooked up to him before. Ok, so he’s in a hospital. But how did he get here?

He tries to remember but his mind is coming up short. He remembers The Oculus, and watching Sara drag Mick along in retreat. He remembers the Time Masters and Druce demanding he take his hand off the kill switch, as well as very vocally ignoring him.

Did they win?

If they won then he’s dead, right? Is this the afterlife? A hospital room? He starts to move his hands to sit himself up, and for his efforts he is smacked in the face with a wire.

He grimaces and looks down at himself. The wire is connected to the finger clip for the heart monitor and lying across his body. Mentally, he questions why the nurses didn’t just put the clip on his left hand, and then he decides to look for himself if there might be a reason.

At first his mind won’t process what he’s seeing, or rather, what he isn’t seeing. The space on the mattress on his left is empty, the sheets falling flat beside him. He actually looks himself over to be sure that his arm isn’t crossed over him and he somehow didn’t notice but no, it isn’t there. He looks back to his side but nothing has changed. After a long moment of staring at the empty space his brain processes that his arm is really gone. Slowly, his eyes trail from where he thinks they’ve decided his hand should be and work their way up until he is looking at a bandaged stump of a shoulder.

That’s about when the panic starts to set in.

He rolls himself onto his right elbow and scoots his way up into a sitting position. It’s only a momentary distraction, and the need to have a new method of accomplishing such a basic task doesn’t help with the distracting part. He tries to will the feeling away. It isn’t impossible, if only because his missing arm is proof that blowing up The Oculus worked and with each second that ticks by he becomes more convinced he has somehow survived.

It’s right then that the door opens and his attention is brought to the sight of a nurse nearly jumping back with one hand flying to her heart and the other clutching her clipboard tightly against her stomach.

“Oh, you’re awake.” She says, her voice breathy with the surprise as she slowly relaxes and looks down at her clipboard. “I’ll uh… I’ll get the doctor.”

She rushes off then, closing the door quickly behind her. Ordinarily he would mark down a nurse being that frazzled upon finding him awake as a sign that he is definitely on the wrong side of enemy lines. But the nurse who just bolted from his room looked young, like she might even be an intern whose superior thought she couldn’t possibly mess up checking if the coma patient was still breathing. So he’ll give her a pass, for now.

A few minutes later his door opens again and an older woman in white lab coat with dark hair and age marks around her smile comes in with what he assumes to be the same clipboard the startled nurse had.

“Hello there.” She greets him, closing the door behind her and approaching his bed. “We were wondering if you were going to wake up. We have a few questions for you.”

“Whose we?” He asks, suspicious.

She laughs as she jots down his heart rate, along with whatever else that monitor tells her. “Me, mostly.” She says, “And the intern you startled. A few of my other collogues. Hospital gossip mill, don’t worry.”

She stops writing things and instead watches him expectedly, though whether she is expecting a reaction or a story he isn’t sure. Either way she gives him time to come up with something, but what could he possibly tell her? That he was holding the dead man’s switch of a bomb? No, that would bring about WAY too many questions. He tries to think, if he only knew how his arm looked before he was cleaned up maybe he could come up with something. Was it cleanly gone? Were there bits of shredded flesh still attached to him? He can’t remember. He remembers knocking Mick out, Sara, the Time Masters, blue/white light, but nothing after.

Mick.

Sara.

“It’s alright, you’ve been out for a week.”

A week.

Why does he get the feeling it’s been longer than that?

“What-?” He cuts himself off with a cough, needing to clear his throat. The doctor waits patiently while he coughs into a close fist. “What’s today’s date?”

The smile she gives him is nothing short of sympathetic.

“January 21st.”

He furrows his brow. January 21st? No. It can’t be January 21st. According to the ship’s calendar of the present it was May 12th.... whenever that was. Any other day would make sense, but January 21st? That was the day he boarded the ship. Did blowing The Oculus not work? Was he dropped back into the timeline precisely when he left with the damage from his failure to punish him? But if he’s been out for a week, then wouldn’t that mess up the timeline?

He swallows; as there is only one question he can feasibly ask the doctor.

“The year?”

She arches her brow, clearly much more concerned now than she had been a few seconds ago.

“2020.”

He feels all the air leave his body.

2020.

Four years.

He does his best not to let the panic show on his face as he swallows down the bile rising in his throat. Four years. He’s been…. Wherever he’s been, for four years. Gone. That’s the important part of it. He’s been gone.

“Good.” He forces himself to say, along with forces a ghost of a smile onto his face. “Wanted to make sure.”

The doctor doesn’t look overly convinced, or even marginally so, at that.

“Do you know where you are?”

He takes another look around the room, as though something will suddenly jump out at him and give him a clue. But there’s nothing. He listens, and he can hear cars outside, even through the closed window, but he can’t see them so he must be on a high floor.

He’s in a city, but he isn’t going to risk it and say Central.

“Beyond a hospital room, I can’t say that I do.”

She nods, “You’re at Star General.”

He nods, his face carefully neutral. After a moment the doctor, Doctor Schwartz, seems to understand that she isn’t going to get anything more from him and informs him that she needs to check in on another patient and then she’ll come back to run some routine tests on him so they can see about getting him out of here.

“And, if you don’t mind, having your name would be helpful.”

He nods, “Michael Tancredi.”

It’s his cleanest alias, not to mention the only one with health insurance. It’s the one he’s always kept to the side just in case he ever wakes up in a hospital like this. Funny how he never once considered the day wouldn’t come when he had to use it.

However, not in his wildest dreams did he think the day would come like this.

“Well Mr. Tancredi I will be back shortly to give you a check up. Is there anyone we can call for you?”

He shakes his head, “No, thanks.”

She gives him a slightly pitying smile, and then she leaves.

He exhales heavily once she’s gone and tips his head back, breathing deep in and out and trying to process.

Four years.

So, assuming blowing The Oculus worked, the mission should be long over and the team back to their lives by now. He can’t imagine it took even them four years to get Savage out of the picture, especially with the Time Master’s no longer orchestrating things. They should have all moved on by now.

Sara should have moved on by now.

Being in Star City he could’ve – and he realized it even in the moment – asked Dr. Schwartz to call her. He has her contact information, though after four years it might not be accurate anymore. But he needs more to go on before he drops in on her life. It’s been four years, and he left her on the edge of a promise. She’d probably slap him upon first sight, not that he would blame her. He knows from that kiss what she would’ve said when they finished the mission had he survived that long. She was mad, but he got the message loud and clear from that kiss that her anger only needed time to pass. She was all for seeing about the future, and them, together.

He can only wonder where she is now.

His mind then trails to thoughts of another person he could’ve asked them to call; Mick.

Mick has an alias that fits with the life of Michael Tancredi, although knowing Mick it is extremely possible he’s in jail right now and that particular burner phone would go unanswered. Or worse he would be so caught off guard he’d fumble and forget, and then the nurses would be suspicious.

That settles any debate he has about calling Mick. The doctor is already suspicious enough of him; he doesn’t need her also suspecting his emergency contact of not being who he says he is.

Lisa, he knows, would do better at plunging into an alter ego at the drop of a hat. But like with Mick he has no idea where she is right now, and he would hate to blow something for her.

No, he’ll just submit to the tests and get out of here himself. After that he can figure out where everyone is and where the best place for him right now might be.

Or, he could call Allen just for the hell of it.

He’s still debating that a little bit when Dr. Schwartz returns with the frightened intern from before pushing along a cart of standard tools. Portable eye/ear light, blood pressure machine, reflex hammer, tongue depressor, those types of things.

“Michael this is Dr. Whitman, one of my residents. Thank you for keeping her on her toes.”

He gives the girl a small, sympathetic smile. “Sorry kid.”

“It’s ok.” She mutters, “Glad you’re awake.”

Dr. Schwartz laughs with a roll of her eyes and then asks him to sit on the edge of the bed. He obeys without protest and first she picks up the light. She checks his eyes, his ears, his blood pressure, listens to his heart, along with all the other standard procedures.

“Hmm… You seem to be in good health physically, and clearly you’re mentally alert.” She comments with a slight frown. She then picks up the little hammer to test his reflexes, which are working as perfectly as the rest of him.

“Why do you say that like it’s a disappointment?”

“Hmm… I was hoping some physical ailment might explain why you’ve been unconscious for a week. We were expecting the coma to last two or three days but it lingered longer.”

He knits his brows together. It isn’t really that big of a shock. If some unconscious guy is brought in you wouldn’t expect him to stay like that all week. But two or three days sound like a push to him. A day would make some since, maybe even two, but three?

“Do you remember being brought in?” Whitman asks, obviously seeing the confusion on her face. Her superior gives her a glare but he’s happy to ignore that.

He shakes is head, meeting the eyes of the young intern.

“You were mumbling.” She informs him. “You wouldn’t open your eyes, but you kept mumbling stuff about “strings” and “go”. You said “go” like fifty times. They gave you anesthesia and you just… didn’t wake up. Until now.”

Dr. Schwartz doesn’t ease up on her glare at all, but by now there’s a resignation on her face. Her resident has already plunged into the details that he’s sure she would’ve rather handled with a little more tact.

“Sometime patients with as much trauma and blood loss as you had take time to wake up from anesthesia. It can add to the stress the body has already been trying to cope with.”

He nods, and if what’s done is done in term of opening up the emotional wound he asks his next question.

“Who brought me in?”

This time Whitman exchanges a glance with Schwartz, who after a moment looks to him.

“One of the nurses was leaving from his shift, practically tripped over you at the front door. It looked like you’d been dumped there.”

Dumped?

So not only did he somehow get from The Oculus to 2020 Star City, but someone dragged him to a hospital only to leave him there?

“The wound of your arm, what was left of it, was still fresh. We figured you hadn’t come from too far.”

There’s a question in there, about where exactly he came from a week ago, what took off his arm.

He tries to come up with a lie, with some sort of story as for where he was within a two-block radius of the hospital that took his arm and then ended with him lying at the front door. But he doesn’t know Star City that well, and that severely limits what he can say.

So, he might as well go with what’s worked for him so far.

“I don’t remember.” He says, his eyes widening as though this were a sudden realization. “I’m sorry.”

Schwartz gives him a sad smile.

“It’s alright. It might come back to you, though to be honest it might not, and that might be for the best.”

He nods, his posture suddenly stiff and his movement slow.

“I’ll put in to have you meet with a psychiatrist to see if there are any other gaps in your memory. Until then get some rest.”

“Ok, thank you.”

With a slightly more assuring smile Schwartz has her resident grab the cart and the two of them leave, do doubt only for Whitman to end up reprimanded for speaking out of term.

* * *

He tries to get some rest, though he abandons it after only a few minutes and instead goes back to thinking about the team and the mission.

And how he has never once in his life followed doctor’s orders before, but he’ll make up his mind on starting now once he thinks through everything else.

So, assuming Savage is out of the picture and the mission is over, where should he expect to find everyone?

Rip he’s sure he’ll never see hide or tail of again, as he probably went right back to 2166 to live out a quiet life with his family, assuming they saved them. If they didn’t then he has no idea what to expect from Rip.

In fact, he’s confident he will never see hide or tail of any of the other unless he goes looking for them. Raymond is probably holed up in a lab somewhere working on the world’s second most useless Halloween costume. Stein likely went right back to making grad students question if the degree is really worth sitting through his class. The kid is probably in school. Assuming Kendra managed to un-brainwash her boyfriend they are probably making a couple’s counselor some very good money somewhere. If she didn’t un-brainwash him then she’s likely reminding Raymond to take a break from his ridiculous projects. Or maybe she and the stalker ensured the counselor a year or two of employment and then she got her senses about her and went back to the “brilliant” inventor.

That leaves Sara and Mick.

Mick is easy enough to guess. He is highly likely either in prison, breaking out of prison, or executing some half-baked plan that will land him in prison. Sara is the real question mark. Would she have come back here to Star City? Or would she have kept traveling like she was before Rip showed up and recruited them? She might even have gone to Central to be with her mother, though maybe not permanently.

At some point there is a knock on his door and when it opens Whitman comes in with a plastic tray balanced in one arm.

“Lunch.” She announces, holding up the tray half-heartedly. She lets herself in and with her free hand she drags over the rolling table and sets it’s top up over him.

“I’m sorry about earlier.” She says, clearly having been instructed to do so. “I didn’t mean to get right into something so... something that must have been so scary for you.”

“Apology accepted.” He forgives, “Besides, it’s not like I hadn’t been wondering how I got here.”

She smirks as she sets the tray of bland hospital food in front of him.

“So there really isn’t anyone you want us to call? No one has missed you in an entire week?”

He snorts and starts picking at the mashed potatoes with the plastic fork.

“I promise kid, I’m not as reclusive as it sounds, despite my efforts.”

She smirks a little, though he can’t tell if she believes him or not.

“I miss anything important while I was out?”

She shrugs, “Probably not.” She says, “Australia is still on fire and it’s looking like the World War III threats won’t happen. So last week was pretty calm.”

He blinks… What?

The fact that she is so nonchalant and relaxed… did he hear her right? Did they screw something up taking down The Time Masters? Or after?

She actually snickers, amused by his silent reaction.

“No, I think the biggest thing last week was the talk about this big documentary premiering downtown tonight. I think it’s a joke but some people are taking it seriously.”

Interesting.

“What’s it about?” He asks, choosing to think about the two far more deadly things she’s informed him of afterwards.

“I don’t know, there was some weird thing last summer with a senator being replaced by a shape-shifting octopus, but I think it ended up being a publicity stunt for that EYES app. After that there were rumors about the government being in on it and somehow it ended in them ‘shutting down’ this supposed secret time travel branch, but like the workers petitioned to keep their jobs, so they had to make a documentary or something to prove they’re not a secret and totally on their own.”

What?

What??

WHAT????

He stares completely and totally blank at Whitman, and the only response she has is to shrug.

“I don’t know it’s weird, and probably just some big stunt. It’s the same people who did the witch and dragon show at that new theme park in D.C. last year.”

Ok…

After she leaves he tries to let it go. She’s probably right anyway. Whatever she just described probably is nothing more than a publicity stunt for some app, or it’s bigger company. Something like that wouldn’t surprise him. The time travel aspect is just a coincidence, and he’s being paranoid.

But, when in his life has paranoia ever turned out to be unjust?


	3. January 21st, 2020

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to wait for season 5 of Legends to hit Netflix so I could rewatch "Meet the Legends" to finish this chapter, so without further ado, here we go!

This is not the first time in which Leonard Snart has checked himself out of a hospital against medical advice, and he’s sure it won’t be the last either. But the day is moving quickly, and if that documentary is as big an event as Whitman made it sound then that means the opening night might be something special, and maybe his best chance to get all the facts.

The first thing he does upon getting out of the hospital is find his way to Star City’s public library. While he wants to head directly for the first row of computers he sees he controls himself. He knows he isn’t up to anything illegal right now, but still, he would rather a little privacy while he gets caught up. So he nods at the friendly looking librarian at desk and weaves his way through the shelves. He’s found in his time that many libraries are set up similarly no matter where you go. There is usually a row of two or three computers set up along a wall by the entrance, and anywhere between two and seven aisles of shelves that stretch back, and beyond those there is usually a more secluded corner with a row of computers that aren’t being used because people hopped right on the first two.

Sure enough when he gets to the end of the aisles there is a new horizontal row of three computers, all of which are currently vacant.

He sits down at the last one in the row and brings up the search page. He decides the first thing he is going to check out is the documentary. He types in _Star City Documentary Screening,_ and the top three results are all slightly different variations of the same headline.

_Living Legends: Documentary Double Feature Event in Star City tonight._

He clicks on the link that seems like it will get to the point the quickest.

The article he is brought to informs him that it’s been a week since Oliver Queen’s death, and that he died on a mission that supposedly decided the fate of the whole world. That’s a shock he needs a moment to digest. He never had the chance to meet Oliver Queen, but from all the stories he heard the man always seemed un-killable.

He keeps reading. The article talks about a big theater downtown showing a special presentation of a documentary on vigilantism that had been filmed partially before Oliver’s death, and afterwards added to in order to include a tribute to Oliver. After the showing there will be an intermission before the premiere of a new documentary _Meet the Legends_. The picture the article supplies for that is, well, a giant octopus attacking a courtroom.

Huh.

_What really happened last summer during Ray Palmer’s testimony to the Senate?_

He arches an eyebrow, partially intrigued and completely dreading where this is going.

_Was there really a nation wide monster crisis? Or was it all just hoax to boost profits? Is Palmer Tech the mysterious proprietor of Heyworld? And could time travel really be involved in any or all of this? Up and coming filmmaker Kevin Harris claims to have all these answers and more. According to Harris he has been following the extraordinary people behind these events and his new documentary “Meet the Legends” will answer our questions once and for all._

Leonard raises his eyebrow. So, whatever this is, it’s a safe bet it’s the team, considering Raymond is involved and they’re calling the film _Meet the Legends._

There’s a link at the bottom of the article to a new one about this Heyworld incident, and what else can he do besides follow the trail?

It somehow doesn’t surprise him to find that Heyworld is a theme park that sprung up seemingly overnight, and the magic and myths concept of the park makes sense given everything that was in the last article. A standard theme park today, there is still an echoing buzz about it’s opening last year and the arena show of a little girl taming a dragon and a superhero being brought back to life.

There are pictures and videos from that day too.

The video quality is pretty shoddy, it’s hard to make out but there is most definitely a flying, fire breathing, dragon in the circus style arena taking orders from an old lady with a Gandalf-like staff. There are other people in the arena’s ring too, and they’re hard to see but the one dressed in white with blonde hair he thinks could be Sara. He can’t be sure, but his breath hitches all the same, and after the video cuts out when the dragon starts flying over the crowd he goes to the pictures.

It is Sara.

The pictures look like they were taken after the dragon show, as many of them are the “actors” posing with kids.

Sara is among them.

She’s the only one he recognizes, and for now he’ll tell himself she’s the only one he cares about.

Her suit is different. It’s sleeker, and her hair is gelled back, and he thinks shorter. But what really grabs his attention about the picture is her smile. Sure, the picture is posed and she’s kneeling down next to a little boy, so of course she’s smiling for the camera, but there’s something genuine about it. Leonard knows enough about people to tell fake smiles from real ones; and this is not fake. A little exaggerated sure, but not a lie. Her face isn’t pained, and her eyes are bright as she basks in the glow of being a hero. A small twinge of pride makes itself known in his chest, but it is easily overpowered by the realization that he doesn’t recognize anyone else in any of the pictures.

Among the other posed pictures there is a guy dressed in red, white, and blue who somehow manages to give off the same wave of stupidity as Raymond. There’s what looks to be an ogre, a mummy, some kind of goat person, and maybe a Minotaur? Even in the non-posed pictures Sara is the only person he can recognize, though he’s 85% sure he sees Raymond in the background somewhere. Regardless it all brings him back to the same question.

How much has changed since The Oculus?

* * *

He sneaks into the theater that night among the surprisingly large crowd. He isn’t sure why he expected the crowd would be much smaller, especially with this being a double feature and the first film being a tribute to Star City’s own hero and the second a world premiere.

He learns a surprising amount from the first documentary. He learns that, according to the heroes of the world, there has been something called “The Crisis”. Some people are skeptical, but the heroes in the documentary pleadingly insist that the world used to be different. Moira Queen is the first interview and it is all Leonard needs to see to be convinced. He remembers reading about her death. He remembers Sara telling him about her death.

According to her and the rest of team Arrow it was Oliver who did this, somehow. None of them seem even totally sure how he did it. Leonard wishes he could be skeptical, it isn’t in his nature to trust that someone could just change the entire world as it’s known. But, then again, there are obviously factors he is yet to learn about. Besides, he may have died attempting a task not dissimilar.

An image appears on the screen just then and he pauses his thoughts. A team Arrow hero he doesn’t know is talking about a world of heroes, and the picture is of just that. A podium, with the President of the U.S. in the center and flanking each of her sides stands a row of heroes.

The first one to catch his eye as familiar is Allen.

He’s standing second on the left, next to a woman with a red cape and an S on her chest. On his other side is the patriotic hero from the Heyworld pictures, though in this he’s wearing a helmet. Next to him is Firestorm and Leonard feels himself ease just the tiniest bit into relief at the sight of what is technically two more familiar faces. The picture isn’t dated, so a part of him does wonder if there is a significant time difference between this and Heyworld, but he’ll put that question on the back burner for now.

Next to Firestorm is Raymond in his tin suit, and never in his life will Leonard admit how happy he is to see that.

The picture plays long enough that he’s able to take in the right flank as well. Queen, followed by a woman he doesn’t know, then Sara in her old suite, which means this must have come before Heyworld last summer, then Mick, and then some guy in a grey helmet.

As the documentary gets going Leonard finds more faces that he doesn’t recognize than those he does, and the few he does recognize are people he’s only ever seen in Sara’s pictures.

He watches as her father tries to explain his stance on vigilantism without losing his job in the process. Most of the action footage is fast and choppy, too much so for him to follow and pick out anyone. He does, at one point in the intro, catch glimpse of a swirl of blonde hair atop a black figure, but he can’t tell if it’s Sara or not.

In any case it’s likely old footage, so he supposes it doesn’t matter.

Not when the third interview to come on is hers.

_“I’ve lost a lot.”_ She says candidly, and Leonard finds himself leaning forward in his seat. _“The world needs a protector, someone to keep it safe. It doesn’t matter if someone’s wearing a mask. All that matters is no one should have to lose their family. Or anyone they love.”_

For the first time it starts to feel like it really has been four years since The Oculus. Sara’s voice filling his ears is suddenly a sound he’s gone without for far too long. Four years, and it feels like a lifetime.

He’s still thinking about her interview as the documentary starts to discuss the morals of vigilantism. He doesn’t know how old that interview is but he’s assuming it’s less than a year. She looked similar enough to how he remembers her. Her hair that odd and yet perfect mess between frizz and curl, her words not up for debate. But there was something different. Something… Something more put-together, more confident.

Something he wishes he had been around to see.

At the start of the intermission he very briefly considers the idea of bailing out now, but what good would that do him? He wants answers, no matter how much they might hurt.

And based on that first documentary, he is willing to bet more than a few of them might.

While he’s thinking about this some employees quietly dart onto the stage below the massive screen and place out stools, eight in total. His heart drops momentarily and the thoughts to run resurface. He can think of only one reason to set up stools like that, especially with a documentary, and this _is_ a premiere.

Even with his eyes locked onto the stools he, for some reason, is still in his seat by the end of the intermission when the lights dim back down and the audience falls silent in anticipation. He can feel the knot of nerves in his stomach winding so tight he can barely sit still, but he’s here.

He isn’t sure what he was expecting, but especially after the dark tone of Oliver Queen’s documentary, it hadn’t been this.

_“The Legends of Tomorrow are everywhere.”_ A narrator starts to explain as pictures of tabloids pop up on the screen. They’re quick so he can’t read every title, but he notices the first one is a clear shot of Raymond wearing a suit and tie and looking like a camera had caught him mid-shouting across the room. The next has a big title mentioning Heyworld and a picture of an entire group of people, though it’s covered so fast he barely has time to note Sara and Mr. Patriotic at the front.

Oh, and when it’s covered, it’s covered with the front page of a newspaper that boasts a solo-shot of Sara.

Then things get weird.

Actually, somehow, the weirdness explains a lot.

The narrator goes on to recap that last summer’s Heyworld incident involved a demon, a dragon, and was broadcast on national television. So that explains all the rumors of time travel and people like the local hospital intern knowing about the Legends.

The next thing he sees is Mr. Patriotic doing some kind of Japanese juice commercial, Mick presenting an Oscar, and then Sara sitting between Obama and a woman he doesn’t recognize.

A woman she is holding hands with.

He keeps his eyes trained on that as the narrator asks the audience who The Legends really are.

He closes his eyes when the next image is of a young woman lying naked in a pile of old Beebo toys.

What the fuck has he missed?

When he opens his eyes again there is, of course, a person he doesn’t recognize on screen.

_“I’m Kevin Harris, and my documentary film crew is the first ever to be granted unfettered access to their lives and their ship, the Waverider.”_

Leonard feels his eyes go wide, like only now his mind is accepting that this is real.

_“So strap in because today, we meet the Legends.”_

He hates to admit it, but he holds his breath.

The very first thing to grace the screen after the intro is the close-up of the woman he’d seen holding hands with Sara in the picture in the intro. Of course, just throw him into the deep end.

_“Hi, I’m… I’m Ava Sharpe. After Congress shut down the Time Bureau, Sara went off to help Oliver Queen, and, uh, I had to fight to keep the Waverider from being impounded.”_

Ok…

The changes to show her in a courtroom, pleading a case for the Legends to continue patrolling the timeline after the shutdown of this “Time Bureau.” She was, evidently, the director of whatever that was; some kind of government office focused on time travel it sounds like.

It sounds too much like the Time Masters for his liking, but he’ll make that call officially later.

So this documentary is exactly what Whitman said it was; damage control so the Legends can keep the government off their backs.

Stupid, but with time travel already revealed he isn’t sure there was a non-stupid solution.

As the movie goes on he learns that Mr. Patriotic’s actual name is Nate Heywood and he has something to do with running Heyworld, and he’s a historian, who apparently rose from the dead at some point, and is bitter about not being invited to some crossover.

Yep, definitely a Raymond 2.0.

Next he sees what he vaguely recognizes as what was once an un-used common area of the ship. He remembers Raymond making a comment once about maybe putting a couch in there, but they never did.

Well, they never did in his time.

Now the room is cluttered with that couch, a few chairs, a stereo, some lamps that look like they were picked up from all around history, and various other furnishings. There is also a hippie, who is apparently from 2044.

In addition to the hippie there is a British shape shifter who - upon telling the film crew that since the Legends are no longer D-list superheroes they can go wherever they want - realizes she has no idea why she is still with the team and literally walks out right then and there.

Also something is clearly wrong with Gideon, but the shape shifter doesn’t seem overly concerned.

There is also a werewolf, a dweeb who very well may have just wandered onto the ship by accident and is now apprenticing under John Constantine. Then there is John Constantine, and the official confirmation that Ava Sharpe is Sara’s girlfriend.

Oh, and the team did this documentary behind Sara’s back.

Despite how awful that is, he can’t help but wonder why it’s important. Rip should be the one to sneak this past, as there is no way in hell he agreed to it.

Except, he hasn’t seen hide or hair, or mention, of Hunter whatsoever.

Ava sets up what could be a child’s birthday party on the bridge, though apparently it’s a welcome home thing for the team members who have been away on a big mission.

The Crisis, he’s assuming.

When those members of the team come in he recognizes all three of them.

Sara, Raymond, and Mick.

While Ava is explaining to Sara what they’re doing – and Sara does not react happily to it – the director interrupts and addresses her as “Captain Lance.”

Leonard can’t help the twinge of pride in his chest.

Still, that confirms that one way or another Hunter is gone, and he can’t imagine he would just leave the Waverider behind. Although maybe, under the right circumstances.

He snorts when Mick calls the camera crew “punks”; good to see some things never change.

But, far too many do, and apparently have.

It’s less than midway through the documentary that he accepts there are no Legends left for the film to introduce. The team still exists for the purpose of protecting the timeline and with no mention of Savage he’s going to assume they succeeded in killing that bastard. In addition to Rip there is no sight or mention of Jax, Stein, or Kendra. He does wonder what happened to them, if they retired themselves from the team to return to their lives or if a mission went too far south. With four of them gone he can only assume at least one was a victim of a mission going sideways, but a deep part of him does hope that by some small sliver of mercy he was the only Legend to meet that fate.

As the documentary goes on and he sees more of what the team is like now four years starts to feel like a lifetime. In addition to no mention of Rip, Kendra, Jax, and Stein, there is no mention of him. Why would there be? He died four years ago. The team has moved on.

Sara has moved on.

On that note, he _tries_ throughout the documentary to like Ava, he really does. He’s not sure how long she and Sara have been together. It’s likely awhile judging by how casual both them and the rest of the Legends seem about it, and clearly Sara trusted Ava enough to leave her in charge to handle fighting for the team’s future while she was dealing with the Crisis. He doesn’t agree with Ava’s decision to not tell Sara about the documentary, but he supposes he can see the logic. Sara trusted her to be in charge, and she was away dealing with world changing stakes that ended up taking the life of her oldest friend. Maybe there was more to the decision than it being awkward to explain over the phone, as Ava puts it. It isn’t the call he would’ve made, but he tries to look past that.

That condolence card is painful to listen to and has him clenching his fist, and he really doesn’t like her going behind Sara’s back to deal with a resurrected Russian maniac. Her apology for it all is shit too, but at least Sara sees that and through her trying to say so without saying so bluntly he gets a very point blank explanation of the Crisis.

The universe has, for all intents and purposes, as been reset. And no one remembers what has changed.

So, that begs the question, why does he?

He remembers Moira Queen being dead, and probably other things that he isn’t yet aware others don’t remember. Sara mentions she was there when things changed, presumably while everyone else who doesn’t remember was dead because apparently entire worlds died. So she remembers, but she hasn’t asked yet about any of the old Legends, which means that in two separate timelines things happened to them.

And, very beside any point he should be focusing on but still, when she gestures vaguely to the camera in her face he gets a good look at her hand; and among the many rings on her fingers he swears he sees his own.

He can’t be sure, and when the next shot is Ava’s confessional he tries very hard to push it aside. He tells himself that if it is his ring she wears it only in remembrance, nothing more. They never got the chance for more.

More, which, she has found with Ava.

Ava, who at least, is beating herself up over what she did and how wrong she was to go behind Sara’s back. Better late than never, he tells himself.

Also, to her credit, she does tell Sara all of this and how she’s just not good with feelings and talking about them, and he of all people can’t fault her for that. He still looks away when the camera captures a _very_ heated kiss between them, but he thinks that is justifiable.

When the credits roll and the lights come up the sound of applause quickly fills the entire theater. Some people stand, Leonard doesn’t. He’s still processing. It’s a lot.

Four years.

Soon the director comes out on stage and thanks the audience for coming, and then he introduces the Legends, and one by one they file out.

Mick comes first, glaring out at the spotlight on the stage and squinting, walking like he’s in an angry daze. Typical Mick, Len is honestly surprised he didn’t bail on this whole thing.

Next comes the werewolf, Mona. Then the future hippie, Behrad. Followed by Heywood, and then Sara.

Sara, who is smiling, and even from this distance with her up on stage and him halfway back in the middle of the crowd, he can see the smile goes a little too wide. Unlike the Heyworld pictures, this smile is forced.

Next is Ava, and then finally Raymond with a grin bigger than Sara’s that is completely genuine. Typical.

“Hi everybody,” Sara says into the mic, “We are the Legends, and we just want to say thank you for watching our film. We hope that you enjoyed it.”

She’s stiff, very stiff. Leonard isn’t sure how long ago this documentary was filmed but it is painfully evident that Sara never got on board with it.

She passes the mic to Ava, who takes it slowly and then looks out to the crowd, then back to Sara, then to the crowd, to Sara, and so on at least two or three more times.

“Of course, uh… None of it was real.”

The crowd goes silent, and Len raises his brow. Ava chuckles nervously, and with a very panicked expression the director stutters that Ava is joking.

“No I’m not.” She quickly retorts. “Come on, time travel? I mean that’s the biggest hoax in history.”

Leonard smirks as one by one the new Legends, and Raymond, all jump on the bandwagon and he can see Sara smirking with pride. Any and all debate ends promptly with Mick taking hold of the mic and telling the booing audience to “shut up. It’s not real.”

He’s still smirking as people start to angrily file out of the theater, chuckling to himself while Sara makes a statement about not believing everything you see on camera and Ava goes so far as to call them frauds.

As he blends into the thinning crowd he knows it would be easy to find them. He knows he could loop around to the back of the building with more than enough time to position himself in wait. He could tell them how much he liked the show. He could snidely inform them that tricking Raymond into making Rasputin explode was cold, and cold is his thing. He could ask just what else it is that he’s missed. He could go back. It would be so easy.

Except, it really wouldn’t be.

They’ve moved on. They’re different now, all of them, Sara and Mick specifically. They’re doing good for themselves and they don’t need him getting in the way of it.

He’s sure they wouldn’t be unhappy to see him alive, but he can’t imagine they wouldn’t also feel guilty about having changed so much, and he doesn’t want that for them.

So he follows the disappointed crowd out of the theater and walks away into the night.


	4. January 21st-January 22nd, 2020

After swiping a wallet to get some food and a cheap hotel room Leonard Snart finds himself with a dilemma. If he isn’t going back to the team what the hell is he supposed to do now?

He supposes he could hop on a train back to Central City and see what’s changed there in the past four years. He’s willing to bet it’s a lot.

He thinks about it some more while he awkwardly shrugs off his jacket and strips down into his boxers and undershirt for the night; this whole one arm thing is going to take some getting used to.

He sighs as he collapses onto his back on the mattress, the realization washing over him that there are probably a lot of things that are going to take some getting used to.

Sara, Mick, the team… He sighs and pushes them from his mind. It’s for the best, he tells himself. He didn’t go back for a reason. They’ve all moved on and he needs to do the same.

He should track down Lisa and let her know he isn’t dead. He wonders how much she’s changed since he’s been gone, and how violently she’ll react to finding out he’s alive. He can imagine there will be a good slap to the face, a demand about what happened to his left arm, and then a sincere “I missed you, you jerk.” He’s looking forward to that last one.

He could call her; it would be easy enough to get his hands on a burner phone. But where would he call? As far as he knows there are two of their shared safe houses with a landline but that could’ve changed, and she’s too smart to have the same cell number now as she did four years ago. She could be anywhere by now, doing anything. He could look online; see if she’s been in the headlines at all lately. That way he could at least find out if she’s in prison or not.

He thinks more about this new world and what resetting the universe – and the majority of people not remembering the before – might mean. Will Lisa remember him telling her he was going to be away for a while with Mick? Or, in this new timeline, did he just take off without telling her?

He swallows down the anxiety. He had considered doing that, since the mission was so last minute. In the end he’d simply left a note for her, did she even get it?

Does she even know he’s been “dead”?

It’s around that point that he falls asleep and when morning comes he decides once and for all that finding Lisa is the best next step he can take. He gets dressed, heads to the nearest corner store for a stale muffin, and then goes back to the library. He is only marginally disappointed when his online search for her yields nothing more recent than an arrest in late 2015 and various social media profiles that belong to other people of similar names. It at least means that she’s been keeping a low profile and out of trouble, though it’s going to make finding her that much more difficult.

He considers, briefly, that Allen and his friends might have an idea as to where she is, and he really hopes his search won’t come to that.

He uses the last of the cash in his liberated wallet to get a train ticket to Central, and the ride is filled with thoughts of more than people.

What is he supposed to do with himself now?

After traveling through time and… sigh… being part of a team, thievery just doesn’t have the same appeal as it used to. It isn’t a challenge anymore. In all honesty it stopped being a challenge long before the Legends entered his life, which is the main reason he went on the mission in the first place. But now… he hates to admit it but Barry was right. There is, somewhere deep inside, a tiny bit of good in him, and it’s fruitless to pretend it isn’t there. He’s done being a criminal, tired of it. The only problem is he has no idea how to do anything else.

Maybe if he’s lucky Lisa might have some pointers.

He arrives in Central and heads to an old safe house. Or… he tries to, that is. The city is different.

He knows he isn’t imagining it. He has had every twist and turn of Central City’s huge property grid committed to his memory since the time he was ten-years-old. He knows there is supposed to be an ice cream shop on the corner of Sixth Street, not a hair salon. He knows Danny’s Bar shut down well over a decade ago; it shouldn’t still be there. He knows every crosswalk, every stoplight, and especially every bank. It should not take him the better part of the afternoon and well into the evening to find his own safe house.

Except the house isn’t there.

Instead of an overgrown concrete walkway Leonard finds himself standing on the rusted tracks of a centuries old looking train route running right through what he remembers as a run down neighborhood. He looks around, wondering if maybe, just maybe, he’s even more in the wrong place than he’d realized. He tries searching for the large oak tree at the end of the street, a part of him not expecting to find it, but it’s there. He also finds the familiar sneakers hung up on the power lines, and even the storm drain with one missing grate. He’s in the right place, but there is no house here.

Ok, time for plan b.

He checks around the city for his other safe houses and eventually, on the third try, finds one is just as he left it.

Of course the resetting universe wouldn’t touch this.

His childhood home is every bit as overgrown as he last left it. Climbing the rickety front steps chips of faded green paint still come off with his footsteps, flaking onto the ground like dandruff. He retrieves the key from its stash between two loose wooden panels of the exterior wall and jiggles it into the old lock. The door sticks the way it has for as long as he can remember and so with his right hand still curled around the knob he bumps his shoulder into the wood, the same way he always has.

Inside the house is every bit as depressing as it’s always been.

The short hallway from the front door to the kitchen is dark and feels twice as long as it really is. The kitchen itself is currently serving as a refuge to half a million-dust particles and probably a fleet of unwanted rodents judging by the one that scampers by his feet. He frowns and makes a mental note to get some traps if he’s going to be staying here, but he can worry about that later. Right now his main concern is, exactly, how long has it been since someone was in here?

The last time he remembers setting foot in this house it was early 2015 while he was letting some heat die down in Keystone. He vaguely recalls Lisa calling him over that summer to let him know she was there and planning a job with her friend Shawna. The place doesn’t look like it’s been touched since then. There is nothing in the cabinets aside from a few unopened and out of date cans of soup and various other non-perishables he always keeps stocked, and the trash is empty.

He opens up the cabinet under the sink and one by one pulls out some cleaning supplies, enough to get the dust off the counters. It’s awkward cleaning with only one arm but not unmanageable. Opening a can of soup, however, that is going to be a challenge.

It’s one he’s sure he could handle, of course, but frankly he isn’t in the mood right now. Besides even though it’s “non-perishable” eating something that’s been sitting in a non-temperature regulated house for five years isn’t exactly appealing to him. So after completing a quick wipe down of the kitchen Leonard ventures upstairs into what was once Lewis’s bedroom and retrieves his miniature safe from under the dummy floorboard in the closet. The safe doesn’t have more than a hundred dollars in assorted bills. He never likes to leave money in safe houses, but because he avoids this one as much as he can it means that when he is here he is likely well and truly screwed. So he keeps a bit of seed money, just in case.

He takes a twenty and locks the safe, dropping it back into place and replacing the floorboard as though it had never been touched. The simple task takes him twice the time that it should; all of his movements are uncoordinated and awkward due to the lack of his left arm. But he’ll learn, he knows he will.

Doesn’t mean it’s not a pain in the ass in the meantime.

He makes sure the house is locked up just as he’d found it, not too tight but with enough care that it’s evident someone took the time to secure things. He slips the key into his pocket instead of its usual hiding space and then he’s gone.

He walks a few blocks; all the while taking note of any more changes to the city. There’s a cemetery where he remembers office buildings, a few streets have different names, but by some stroke of luck Saints and Sinners is still right where he remembers.

He doesn’t let his relief show on his face as he enters the pub, as this isn’t exactly the type of place where you want to walk in grinning ear to ear. Not unless there’s been an Iron Heights riot recently, and he isn’t sure if there has.

The pub is mostly empty apart from an old man nursing a hangover and two people over in a booth eating an early lunch. The bartender does a double take when he sees him approaching and Leonard snickers.

“Shit, thought you were dead.” The kid says, his voice low as Leonard claims a stool. He notices the kid – Cam, around Jax’s age, not someone he’s ever had extensive contact with but someone he knows – eye the limp sleeve of his jacket. “What happened?”

“Need to know.” He answers smoothly, “You seen my sister lately?”

“Nah.” The kid shrugs, putting a beer in front of him. Not his preferred beer, but last time he was here Cam was still bussing tables. He’s taking a guess. “She’s hasn’t been around here in a while. When was the last time you talked to her?”

He gives Cam a look that says it all; not since before he disappeared himself.

The kid grunts, taking note.

“My dad was running a job up to Gotham a couple years back, asked me to find us some extra muscle. I was looking for you but Lis said you were running something with your buddy, so she came along. Something must’ve happened right after we got back, she came in two days later and asked me if she could borrow the safe house. Ended up giving my old man the money for it. Haven’t seen her since.”

Leonard hums and takes a sip of his beer, trying his best not to grimace at the taste. The kid tried.

“What’s the address?”

For a moment he thinks the kid is contemplating not telling him, and maybe he is, but ultimately Leonard gets what he’s asked for. An address in Gotham, which is a solid ten hours away.

Peachy.

He could’ve asked for a number, though Cam doesn’t drop any hints that he’s at least heard from Lisa in all this time he hasn’t seen her. Why would he have? Lisa and Cam were never close, and if Leonard taught Lisa anything he taught her how to cut ties. Besides, buying a safe house off someone is a big deal. _Nobody_ likes to part with any form of security in their business. Doing something like that often requires some exceptional dirty work in return, or paying triple the asking price. You don’t make a deal for a permanent safe house unless you’re up to something _big._

Bigger than he ever liked Lisa getting involved with.

He finishes three-quarters of his shitty beer and leaves the money on the counter with a standard tip, and one his walk back to the house starts planning his trip to Gotham.


	5. January 24th 2020

His trip to Gotham is uneventful, which Leonard is in equal parts resentful and grateful for. Normally he would much rather drive than take a series of trains, even going halfway across the country, but he isn’t sure if driving fourteen hours with one arm is the best idea right off the bat. Plus he’s a little in a rush, so there’s no time to get stalled up taking it slow. Knowing Lisa all but vanished from the Central City underworld has him worried. She can take care of herself just fine, but she also has always had a habit of getting in over her head.

So without the need to worry about which turn to take and if there will be traffic on the highway he spends practically the entire trip thinking about Lisa; both in relation to what he may find her doing and how she might react upon seeing him.

He’s still betting on getting a punch to the face, but the reaction after that is a little harder to predict.

If she knows the truth about what happened to him she might ask what he’s planning on doing now, to which he’ll tell her he has no idea. At that point she will either uselessly encourage him to return to the team or maybe she’ll offer to cut him in on whatever she’s got going on. He can’t imagine she would keep him on the outskirts of her job, at least not without apology. She’s always been happy to let him in on her schemes if he wants it, even if he shows up in the middle of everything and she complains about how much more difficult things will be now.

The thought also crosses his mind that she could – possibly – be playing for the heroes now. He doubts it if she’s in Gotham, as he can’t imagine _how_ she could’ve gotten herself tangled up with that guy in the bat costume. But stranger things have happened, and if she turns out to know that he died doing something less than sinister it may have been enough to send her into the arms of S.T.A.R. Labs and it’s heroes; specifically Ramon.

He grimaces, and truly hopes he does not find that Ramon somehow got involved with the bat and Lisa followed.

When he at long last makes it to Gotham he heads right for the address Cam gave him. It’s a small apartment in a run down neighborhood, even by Gotham’s standards.

It’s late in the evening by the time he gets there. The sun is setting and there are no rumblings coming from inside the third floor apartment that would indicate life. He sighs, looks like he is doing this the old fashion way.

This is far from being the first time he has ever picked locks with only one hand to do the job, but these are also Lisa’s locks he’s dealing with meaning there are four of them, and all are of incredible difficulty. In the time it takes him to get in he’s lucky no one comes through and catches him, therefor he is quick to shut the apartment door. He won’t relock it; he’ll let that serve as a warning that he’s here.

The front door opens up into a small living room. It looks a lot more homey than your average safe house, but if Lisa is running a long-term game that makes sense. The walls are painted a light grey color with some white picture frames hung up. He glances at the pictures and raises an eyebrow. There are only two, but both are of a little girl with platinum blonde hair. In the first picture she’s wearing a green dress and posing with a paper graduation cap on her head and a huge open-mouth grin on her face. He moves on to the next picture. Same little girl, this time sporting an excited smile with her teeth clenched together and arms by her sides, wearing a pink leotard and black sweatpants. Between the two pictures is a wall-mounted mirror, and below it all is a beaten brown loveseat covered in some kind of animal hair that Lisa most definitely got second hand. Across the room is a television set, on the shelf of which rests a DVD player he vaguely recognizes as his. It’s supposed to be in a safe house, a safe house that he couldn’t find no matter how high and low he searched Central City.

He keeps moving, through the doorway into the kitchen. It’s small and mostly void of decoration. The wallpaper is printed with little blue and green flowers and looks as through it hasn’t been updated since the 1950’s, and the small wooden table in the center is overrun with clutter. He steps closer, sifting through the objects and papers.

A Cinderella PEZ dispenser, a crayon drawing of a pink flower, a phone charger, and most interestingly a mustard colored paper with bold font announcing the January lunch menu for Gotham North-Side Elementary School.

It’s right as he’s picking up the paper that he hears a soft thud and he snaps his attention up, only to find a black cat strutting along the plastic countertop.

The creature meows at him and he frowns. He should’ve noticed the small plastic double bowl in the corner, one side empty and the other half full of brown and orange colored chips.

“I don’t suppose this is yours?” He says, holding the menu towards the cat. Its only response is to stretch out it’s front legs and arch it’s back.

He rolls his eyes and puts the menu back where he had found it. Although there are probably more points of interest buried under the child’s drawings he decides to abandon the table for now and move on to the rest of the kitchen.

Inside the first cabinet he opens there is a healthy mix of adult glasses on the middle and top shelves while the bottom is dominated by plastic. The next cabinet is mostly cheap ceramic plates - some of which he is fairly certain he recognizes - with two hard plastic ones of neon colors propped on the side. The sink is a mix of everything, and the next cabinet doesn’t tell him much. Peanut butter, cookies, chips, wheat crackers, an opened box of movie theatre candy… This could all be a snack cabinet designated for children as easily as it could be Lisa’s.

Moving onto the fridge has his breath catching in his lungs. Much like the kitchen table it’s surface is dominated with evidence of a fairly domestic life. There’s a calendar attached to the center by magnets, with notes scribbled in his sister’s handwriting that read things like _Noah, dentist. 3:00_ and he realizes that up until this moment a part of him had been hoping that maybe, somehow, he’s had the wrong place.

Even if the DVD player is his, and some of the plates, and the attempted normalcy of the living room not falling quite right all points to Lisa. A selfish part of him – he realizes – has until this point been hoping.

Because, obviously, a kid lives here.

He realizes all in that moment that this isn’t a safe house anymore. This is a home. Lisa isn’t on a long haul job; she’s trying to build a life. The universe reset, things are different, she has a kid.

He should go.

Unfortunately for him it isn’t going to be that easy this time. He hears the smallest creak of a door and that is all the warning he has. He looks to the other end of the small kitchen where the window is located but it’s too late. He hears a click followed immediately by a gasp, and when he turns his head he is face to face with Lisa in the doorway, tipping down her gold gun.

“Lenny?”

The relieved exhale of his breath is automatic. Suddenly his mind processes that with all the apparent changes to the universe he has been harboring a small fear she might not remember him, or that he might not even exist as far as this world is concerned. He supposes he should say something, prove to her it’s really him, but all he can seem to do is stare at her. She, in turn, stares at him. Her eyes rake him over, lingering on the limp left sleeve of his jacket, and then back up to his face with a question in her eyes and urgency overtaking her face.

He shakes his head, a promise that the missing limb isn’t a pressing matter and has been taken care of. She nods, and sets her gun into place in a holster on her belt.

“Don’t move.” She orders, and then she turns back for the living room.

He can hear her talking in a hushed voice in the next room, though he can’t make out any of the words. He looks back to the window where he finds the cat now sitting, as though daring him to try disobeying orders and running. The sound of footsteps brings his attention back to the kitchen doorway in time to see the little girl from the photos passing by, staring at him and moving slow as Lisa ushers her along. Once the girl finally turns the corner of the hallway that he assumes leads to bedrooms Lisa meets his eyes again, her expression suddenly exhausted, because she knows probably better than he does that no part of this is going to be easy.

“Cute kid.” He says, “Yours?”

She scoffs, “She’s five.”

It’s a deadpan, a tease, but the humor of it is lost for him because it is also a much-needed assurance. It contains an unsaid “ _you were here five years ago, you would’ve known.”_

It’s more comforting than he’s guessing she knows.

“I’ve heard a lot’s changed.”

She bites her lip and checks her hip against the doorframe. “Who from?”

He doesn’t answer right away. Instead he looks around the kitchen some more before finally he pulls out the chair nearest to him. As he settles himself down he begins to drum his fingers against the surface of the table once and then twice, trying to figure out how to answer that question. Trying to figure out how much she might know.

“Have you seen Mick?” He asks, “Since we left?”

She shrugs and comes over and pulls out the second chair, unhooking an elephant printed cushion from it before she sits down.

“I hear from him more than I’ve seen him.” She admits, “Last I _saw_ him he was telling me you died blowing up something called The Oculus? That these people called Time Masters used it to control everything?”

He continues tapping his fingers against the tabletop, not giving her a verbal answer, but really that’s answer enough. If she had the story wrong he would correct her, she knows that.

“That how you lost your arm?”

He stops tapping his fingers.

“I woke up in a hospital in Star City two days ago.” He says, finally meeting her eyes. “They told me what day it was. I don’t… I don’t know where I’ve been the last four years.”

She nods, leaning back in her chair, unperturbed.

“They said the damage on my arm was fresh when they found me.”

She nods, and he knows his sister well enough to know when they’re thinking the same thing. There are exactly two possibilities as to what’s happened to him. Either he’s been in deep trouble the past four years and he can’t remember any of it, or he hasn’t lived the past four years at all.

And he is heavily suspecting the latter.

“Cisco might be able to figure it out.”

He shakes his head. This is a lot, more than he’s willing to admit in fact. Lisa having a life, a kid being so prominent in that life, even if he still doesn’t know by what means. What he does know is that he can sense her inevitable ask about his team and the plea to contact them coming, and he isn’t ready to face that. He just… He needs to figure something out first. Anything. Just one idea as to where he goes from here, and then he’ll be willing to think about letting at least Mick know that he’s alive.

If he goes to Ramon he’ll call the Legends before the two of them even meet up, and he isn’t ready for that.

“You two a thing?”

He doesn’t ask because he’s being nosey, or because he would feel guilty asking Lisa to keep his survival a secret from someone she’s involved with. It’s because if she’s doing some long distance thing with Cisco that means she has frequent contact with the S.T.A.R. Labs resident techy, and if that’s the case it’s a good reason to get out of here. Less risk that way.

But she shakes her head.

“We keep in touch.” She says, “We’re friends. A few years ago, when I first came out here we were closer, and maybe we could’ve been something. But life got in the way, both for him and for me.”

He nods, “Noah?” He asks, recalling the name from the calendar.

Lisa smirks, unbothered by him knowing that name even though she hasn’t said it.

“After you died I came here… Just to get away, honestly.” She says, “It was funny. You died a hero, and it felt like stealing…. I know you would never say you were ashamed of me, no matter what I did, but it felt wrong after that. So I came here and found a job in this little flower shop a few streets down.”

She pauses briefly when her cat leaps onto the table and stands in front of her, sitting when she starts to scratch it’s ear.

“I adopted Lucky here.” She giggles, “And there was another girl at the shop, Ashley. Noah is her daughter. She would bring Noah to work with her sometimes when she couldn’t find a sitter, and some weekends I would sit when she was out with her boyfriend.”

“Why do I get the feeling the boyfriend’s a crap bag?”

She chuckles, sadly. “Well Ashley isn’t much better.”

He narrows his eyes, not thrilled to hear that.

“She’s in jail right now, heroine charge. I had Noah when it happened and I was able to get temporary emergency custody. While I had that I got certified as a foster parent so she could stay with me. That’s where we are now.”

He nods, even if there are more unasked and unanswered questions on the table. They’ve found a stopping point for now, and so it’s quiet. Somewhere in the background he can hear a light humming coming from deeper inside the apartment; the sound of Noah keeping herself entertained.

“You want to stay the night?” Lisa asks, and coming from anyone else the offer would feel like pity. But this isn’t anyone else, this is Lisa; it’s never pity.

It’s having his back. It’s what they’ve always done.

It is, apparently, the one thing he can count on.


	6. January 24th-January 26th 2020

Dinner that night is awkward.

Lisa heats up some chicken nuggets and instant mashed potatoes for Noah, and the two of them split Chinese take-out. He sits in a folding chair Lisa dragged out from a closet in the hall and Noah keeps one eye on him at all times like she can’t decide if he is a threat or a potential playmate.

He’s having trouble drawing that distinction too.

Lisa tries to break the tension a few times by asking Noah about school or her homework, but inevitably the conversation always lulls back into nothingness.

“Can I be done?” The little girl eventually asks, and so Lisa eyes her neon purple plate of smeared ketchup and half finished potatoes.

“One more bite of potatoes.”

Noah frowns but picks up her fork, and scoops up barely a speck of the potatoes.

“More than that.” Lisa chides, and Noah’s frown turns deeper and her eyes glare, but she does as she’s told.

Still chewing her last bite of potatoes Noah pushes herself away from the table and goes and slides her plate into the sink. Leonard keeps picking at his own dinner until long after she has gone off to play in her room, and Lisa does the same.

However, eventually, something has to give.

“So you don’t want me call Cisco?” Lisa asks, swirling her fork around the last few rice grains on her plate.

“What’s he gonna do?” He sighs, “Tell me I’ve been gone for four years? We already know that.”

“He can contact the Waverider.” She offers, “Let your team know you’re alive.”

He shakes his head, his eyes avoiding hers directly.

“I saw their movie. They’re not my team anymore.”

Lisa gives a slight incline of her head, a consideration. Eventually she gets up with her plate and heads over to the sink to start the dishes.

“Not even Mick and Sara?”

He frowns, and looks over at her but finds himself looking at the back of her head, and the cat jumping up onto the counter to paw at the water when she turns the faucet on. He never told her about Sara, and sure a lot has changed but he never considered that Mick might have told her anything about whatever he and Sara were, whatever that was.

Although, now that he’s thinking about it, telling Lisa about a girl he may or may not have had a thing for would be a very Mick thing to do.

After a moment she looks at him and smirks, then focuses back on washing the dirty plates.

“She came with him when he came to tell me what happened. Kind of like a buffer, I guess.”

He nods. The words say that that is all she knows about Sara Lance; a teammate who could potentially hold Mick’s leash. But the smile informs him she knows more. She knows Sara meant something to him.

He wonders if she knows whether or not he meant anything to Sara.

Oh well, doesn’t matter now. She’s moved on.

“They should know.” She tells him, looking him in the eye.

He nods, and gets up to bring his plate over.

“I’ll tell them.” He promises. “I just… I need some time first. A lot’s changed.”

He isn’t quite sure if he means changed for himself or for his – the - team, but regardless Lisa nods, and that’s that.

He looks around the kitchen, trying to find something to do. Soon Lisa starts piling her dishes into a drying wrack and he decides that could be something for him to do. He locates a lightly stained dishrag pushed up against the back of the counter and so with it clutched between his fingers he pulls the first plate from the rack.

Then he frowns.

He could put the plate down and wipe it that way, but then the counter would get wet, and that is something he’s sure Lisa is trying to avoid.

Speaking of Lisa, she’s looking at him out of the corner of her eye. She’s stopped washing her cup, the sink still running and the sound of the heavy stream of water hitting the bottom is the only sound in the kitchen. Eventually he sighs and puts the plate back.

“You got a bathroom?”

She nods, and she hesitates, like she is trying to work out why he’s asking. She probably is. In any case she turns and points out the kitchen entryway towards an opening to a hallway.

“Turn right, first door on the left.”

He nods, and he is fully aware of her eyes on him the entire time he is leaving the kitchen.

The bathroom is small. On the right-hand side there is a bathtub hidden by a light blue shower curtain. The bright lights over the sink combined with the white tiled floor and white walls leave room with very little shadow, meaning he has an excellent view of every angle. He maneuvers himself out of his sweater and drops it onto the closed lid of the toilet. He does the same with his undershirt, and then for the first time takes a good look at the bandages of his shoulder.

He unwraps them with minimal effort. The nurse had told him when he left the hospital that he would need to change the bandages every 24 hours for a week, maybe take them off for bed and put them on in the morning. So he is already behind the ball.

The nurse also mentioned he should have someone help him with the bandages.

He sighs; rewrapping will be tomorrow.

Once then bandages have fallen aside he gets a good look at the messy line of black stitches that snakes through the center of the stub that is what remains of his shoulder. There is very little flesh left, and what is left is jaggedly sewn together. Lightly, he skims the tips of the fingers he still has over the rough scar. He wonders what it must have looked like when they first found him, how much was left, and how much the doctors had to decide to take.

Two quick but firm knocks that sound low on the door pull him out of his thoughts.

“One minute.” He calls, reaching back for his undershirt.

“Sorry.” Noah’s little voice squeaks, “I gotta go potty!”

* * *

Staying the night turns quickly into staying the weekend. Lisa’s job is one that requires her to work Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, and she tells him she’ll be taking Noah in with her.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you with her.”

“It’s that you have a case worker breathing down your neck and if they found out you left her with a felon it’d be over.”  
She’d hesitated but ultimately she had nodded, her face still sorry as he’s ever seen it.

“Barry deleted both our records awhile back.”

He had nodded. He’d figured the absence of her record played a hefty roll in her getting her foster certification.

“But just in case, and besides Noah doesn’t know me.”

She’d nodded again, and neither of them had given any other words on the subject.

Spending most of his time over the weekend alone in Lisa’s apartment – save for Lucky – he had a lot of time to think, time he once would’ve used for plotting his next job.

He almost thought about it too, but even if thieving hadn’t lost it’s appeal the apartment kept him surrounded by traces of Noah and his sister’s new life. He can’t ruin that.

So he putters around the apartment and thinks all through the weekend, and then on Sunday night after Noah has gone to bed he finds himself seated on the couch with Lisa.

For a while they just sit there watching _Prison Break_ reruns. It’s always been one of the few shows they can agree on, as well a good cause of distraction. Normally they point out the plot holes together but not tonight. Tonight they’re quiet, almost entranced by the TV.

By the start of the third episode, however, something has to give.

“You don’t have to go.”

He turns to find Lisa is looking at him, and then he promptly turns his attention back to the TV.

“What am I supposed to do here?”

He sees her shrug out of the corner of his eye.

He lets it go another minute before he sighs and reaches for the remote so that he can pause the show.

“I don’t want to mess up what you have here.”

“And what do I have here?” She scoffs, “A cat? A dead-end job at a flower shop?”

“A kid who needs you to keep her out of the system.”

She scoffs again, “Yeah well, between you and me I think my caseworker would be thrilled to find out there’s another adult in the picture. I don’t think he’s too keen on the fact that I don’t have any help.”

He hums, considering that.

“Even if that other adult lost one arm under – as far as the doctors are concerned – mysterious circumstances?”

“He doesn’t need to know that part.” She says with a shrug, and he glares at her.

Lucky hops up between them right then, looking for someone to scratch his ear, and so Leonard obliges.

“Look.” Lisa deadpans after another minute. “I know this place isn’t big, but that junk closet down the hall is a good size when it’s clean. We could fit a bed in there. It’d be a little cramped but it’d be something.”

He must not look overly convinced, and a part of him isn’t. He could insist that he doesn’t need a bed if he stays here; he is more than content to sleep on the couch. But he already knows why that wouldn’t be an option, and it has nothing to do with him. It’s Noah, and the caseworker. He and Lisa did enough stints in foster homes growing up to know that parents are supposed to have enough room, enough beds to be specific. If they found out Lisa had someone living long-term on her couch – her very small couch – then it wouldn’t look good.

“If you’ve got somewhere to be then fine, I get it.” Lisa suddenly huffs, “I just want you to know you’re welcome here; no matter how much has changed.”

He is very careful to not react to that. Instead he keeps his eyes trained carefully on Lucky as the little cat nuzzles against his fingers, moving the angle that he is being scratched at.

“Just think about it.” Lisa finally says, and with that she gets up and leaves him and the cat to their own devices.


	7. 2020

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Mentions of the real world pandemic ahead. Nothing graphic, just acknowledgment that it's a thing.

Against his better judgment Leonard elects to stay, even if only for a little while. At the very least until he figures out what he’s going to do now that both thieving and being a Legend are out of the question.

Lisa, trying to keep things as transparent as possible, contacts Noah’s caseworker about him sticking around and it doesn’t really come as a surprise to him when the caseworker wants to come over and check him out, and he knows the guy is probably searching through the system for his record.

“He won’t find anything.” Lisa assures him as the two of them start dragging out the odds and ends of the closet. “If he didn’t find my record, he won’t find yours.”

“Hmm.”

She rolls her eyes at his noncommittal response, and starts lifting a little pink bike with butterfly stickers on it.

“What are you doing?”

The question comes from a little voice, Noah having emerged from the living room where they left her enthralled in a movie only a few minutes ago.

Lisa huffs as she sets the bike against the wall.

“Cleaning out the closet. We’re gonna put a bed inside so Lenny can sleep in there.”

Noah looks… Well, she doesn’t look mad. She looks a little disturbed, maybe confused. In the few days he’s been here so far Leonard hasn’t had much interaction with her. Lisa brings her to school every morning and then she stays at an after-school program until Lisa is out of work and goes to pick her up. By the time they get home it is usually coming up on six o’clock, and through dinner she often babbles about her day whilst avoiding eye contact with him. After dinner she plays in her room until Lisa drags her out for a bath and to get ready for bed. He isn’t sure if she is always this routine or if her obvious unease about him is an influence in it.

He supposes that if he is staying, he’ll find out sooner or later.

“Are you gonna get rid of my bike?” She asks, missing half the syllables, as children are prone to do.

“No.” Lisa says with a smile as she squats down to Noah’s level. “Though we might have to move it your room. How about while we clean the closet you clean your room?”

Noah, predictably, isn’t thrilled with that idea. She scrunches up her face and Lisa has to physically nudge her towards her room.  
“Go on.” She encourages, “Otherwise your poor toys are going to be run over by your bike.”

Noah’s frown deepens, a lot. Her face turning red and she stomps her foot hard before stalking into her room and slamming the door. While Leonard wasn’t expecting a happy response to cleaning her room, he wasn’t expecting that, and by the looks of things Lisa wasn’t either. She’s still squatted down, staring at Noah’s closed door with the bright pink wooden nameplate clattering audibly and swinging from side-to-side.

“If she isn’t ok with me here…”

“No.” Lisa says, getting to her feet, just as they hear a loud thud from inside Noah’s room. “She… I don’t know what her deal is. We’ll give her a few minutes to cool off, then I’ll go talk to her.”

Leonard nods, and so the two of them drag more odds and ends out of the closet before she leaves him to finish up the smaller items while she talks with Noah.

There isn’t much in the closet once things like Noah’s bike, a pair of folding chairs, and one collapsible soccer chair are out of the way. There’s a basketball, one adult and one child’s pair of ice skates, which makes him smile because he remembers taking Lisa skating when she was little and how much she always loved it. There’s a neon green helmet with a monkey sticker on it, and a bag of cat litter along with some extra cans of food. There is also a broom and a dustpan, which is helpful because the closet is long overdue for a cleaning of that sort.

With the final contents of the closet removed and resting in a pile in the hall he’s sweeping when Lisa emerges from Noah’s bedroom. She snickers at him before she says anything, and he supposes he must look a little ridiculous with the broom gripped low so that his arm is twisted around the handle and it’s braced against his shoulder. He also has the dustpan against his foot so that it won’t move.

“She ok?”

“She’s fine.” Lisa assures him as she kneels down to take hold of the dustpan. “She’s just…” She trails off with a small laugh, “Ok this is going to sound mean but remember she’s five. Your whole one arm thing kind of freaked her out. She thought you had some kind of contagious disease that made it fall off and if you stay she’ll catch it.”

He snickers and sweeps his pile of dust into the pan as best he can manage.

“You set her straight?”

“Thought about not.” Lisa taunts, “But if sweeping is this difficult for you it’s probably best you stick around.”

“Hmm, how thoughtful of you.”

* * *

With Noah assured that she will not be losing her arm she opens up, which helps immeasurably when her caseworker stops by to check things out. Agent Nelson, and Leonard keeps his opinions on addressing him as “agent” to himself. Nelson is an older man who probably should’ve retired ten years ago, but he seems to have Noah’s best interests in mind. Besides, ultimately he doesn’t have any problem with Leonard being under the same roof as Noah.

Which, as it turns out, they are going to be spending a lot of time together.

Everything starts out so slow. He hears murmurs of the news while he’s out at the hardware store or he has the TV on in the background while he’s working on the closet. There’s some new virus over in China, and then a cruise ship somewhere can’t dock. It’s nothing he’s concerned with.

Until Lisa’s job and Noah’s school both shut down.

For Lisa the shut down is indefinite, for Noah it’s originally two weeks. Then it’s another two weeks, and then a month.

At that point they are all aware she won’t be going back.

Lisa has an old laptop she’s able to do most of her schoolwork on, and between the two of them they manage to answer most of her questions. But there is still the fact that Gotham is a cesspool for germs, so they’re only going out for necessities.

Or, more accurately, he is only going out for necessities.

About once every week and a half he ventures out to the nearest grocery store, and when he gets back Lisa disinfects the groceries while he takes a shower. He wants to be able to roll his eyes and say they are being ridiculous, but when the city’s case count keeps rising and the lives on the line are those of his sister and her family he can’t bring himself to be apathetic.

So he takes a shower after grocery shopping, and aside from grocery shopping he stays put in the tiny apartment, in his closet bedroom.

With a five year old.

“Before I lived here, Lisa said you were dead.” Noah casually mentions one day. She’s been “helping” him paint his room, which means she’s been sitting on the floor in corner where he isn’t working and painting on paper with brushes.

“She thought I was.” He explains, not taking his eyes off the strokes of browns that he is layering onto the walls with a roller. “I was in an accident, the one that took my arm. I was all alone, so Lisa and my friends all thought the accident killed me since I didn’t come out right away.”

“Why didn’t they wait for you?”

He sighs, “It was a little more complicated than that.”

“How?”

He pauses in his work, looking over his shoulder to see she has her paintbrush sitting in its little cup of water and she’s looking at him with her head tilted in the way that signals she is very invested in this.

So his chances of distracting her are slim to none.

He sighs, and rests his own brush in his paint tray before cocking his head towards the bed pushed up against the other wall. She grins wildly, scrambling over to the bed and up to sit with his pillows behind her. He’ll never understand why she finds stories of his and Lisa’s past so interesting, not when they remove so many of the details that is. But regardless Noah is captivated every time.

“Alright, refresh my memory kid. You’ve met Cisco, right?”

She nods, pulling one of his two pillows out from behind her and hugging it close to her chest.

“Uh-Hu.”

“And you know who he works with?”

She nods again, practically bouncing in her spot. “The Flash!” She answers, “But I’m not allowed to tell.”

He chuckles, “Right. Well Cisco and the Flash have some friends who I used to work with. Ever hear of The Legends?”

“No.” She answers with a shake of her head.

“Well some of them have powers, and some don’t, but they help people. Anyway I used to work with them, a long time ago, and we were on a mission and I was by myself, and something happened. Since I didn’t come back the others figured I was dead.”

“Didn’t they look for you?”

That is a question Leonard is entirely unprepared for, and he realizes in that moment it is also one that has been gnawing at the back of his mind this entire time.

Didn’t they?

Even if they were all sure he was dead, and they had to clear the area, did they ever return to the Vanishing Point? Did they ever look for a body?

And it all goes back to the question of where was he?

He’s accepted by now that he was likely floating through time, and if timequakes are still half a jarring as he remembers then there was probably a major one after The Crisis. Probably big enough to launch him back into the timeline.

Four years too late.

Suddenly he catches Noah’s curious look and he realizes he’s been quiet for too long.

“Probably.” He answers her, “But there would’ve been a lot of places to look. It would’ve been very easy for them to not find me.”

She nods, and doesn’t look like she totally believes him.

“Were they your friends?”

“Some of them.” He answers, “Some I just put up with because I had to. Like annoying kids at school.”

She giggles. “Which ones were your friends?”

“Well… There was Mick…”

And so he launches into a tale of Mick, who she has apparently heard of from Lisa but never met. He also tells her about Sara, censoring a few details for the sake of her innocence, but ultimately he thinks he gets the message across.

“Was she your girlfriend?”

Maybe the message got across a little too well.

“No.” He says, and maybe it’s because he says it so firmly that Noah tips her head.

“Did you love her?”

He sighs, “I… It was complicated, ok?”

“Why?” She asks, “Did she take bad medicine?”

He blinks… “Wha-?” He cuts himself off, suddenly remembering Noah’s mother and the heroine charge. Crap. That is this kid’s understanding of ‘complicated’.

“No, nothing like that.” He promises, hoping to blow right over the drug issue. “It was… You know how it takes time to make a friend? You didn’t really like me when we first met, and now we’re friends?”

She shrugs, but the kind of shrug that shows she understands.

“Well, Sara and I met when we started working together, and it took time to get to know each other. My accident happened really soon after we liked each other. We didn’t have time to get to love.”

Noah doesn’t respond to that right away, and Leonard finds that he is holding his breath, hoping she’ll drop the issue.

“But you’re alive now.” She eventually says. “If you love her, why can’t you tell her now?”

“Because,” he sighs, “In the time I’ve been gone Sara fell in love with someone else.”

Noah frowns, “But if she loved you-”

“I don’t know if she did.” He interrupts, “And she loves someone else now, someone who makes her very happy, ok? It doesn’t matter if she used to love me or not.”

Noah keeps her eyes trained on the mattress. “Does she know you’re alive?”

He blinks, caught off guard, though he isn’t sure why, and the way Noah blinks and looks up at him through her lashes, patiently awaiting an answer…

“Not yet.” He admits, “That’s not something you can tell someone over the phone, or FaceTime. I’ll tell her and the rest of the Legends after the virus is gone, ok?”

She doesn’t look happy about it but she nods in agreement, and Leonard chooses not to think about the fact that the med bay could likely protect the Legends against this and so the virus probably isn’t good enough reason for him to avoid them.

But, he tells both Noah and himself that it is.

He manages to hold onto that excuse for the better part of the year. Things don’t start relaxing with the pandemic until well into the summer, and even then it’s a small reprieve clouded with fear that things will take a turn for the worst again. It isn’t until after Thanksgiving that it starts to feel like they can breath a little easier, and even then it’s slight. But the approach of Christmas lightens the aura of fear around the apartment, if only a little bit.

“But I wanna get a real tree!”

Well, he did say it was only by a little bit.

Lisa huffs and pauses with a plastic branch still held in her hand.

“Noah, all the tree farms are outside of the city, and we can’t leave the city right now.”

They can, but not without signing a wavier, going through at least one temperature checkpoint, and a whole mess of other safety measures that they are better off just not dealing with.

Noah sinks deeper into the cushions of the couch with a huff, and continues to whine intermittently throughout the entire process of him and Lisa setting up the tree.

Despite the plastic tree Noah gets more and more excited as Christmas draws closer, and on Christmas Eve when it is well after midnight and they’re sure she won’t be getting up Leonard and Lisa are out in the living room with the TV on low while they set up Santa presents.

“You know I had been planning to hide her Christmas present in that closet, you really messed up my plans.”

“Hm, my apologies.” Leonard drawls, his attention mostly on the board game he is wrapping, and he’s pretty damn proud of himself for how non-crappy the one-handed job is coming out. “I didn’t mean for my coming back to life to cause you such an inconvenience.”

Lisa rolls her eyes, and it’s quiet for a few minutes, which means his words hang in the air.

“That why you’re still here?”

He pauses, and when he looks up he finds she is still wrapping the at-home slime kit. But her movements are slow, because while her eyes may be on the present her focus is very obviously on him.

“Don’t get me wrong Lenny, I love having you here. But you’ve been back for almost a year now. Maybe it’s time to tell Mick.”

And Sara.

She doesn’t say it, but based on the twinkle of knowledge in her eyes when she glances up at him, he knows she’s thinking it.

He doesn’t answer.

He just sits there, staring at her, until finally she resumes her wrapping.

“Cisco’s supposed to call tomorrow.” She says, “Usually for Christmas I go to Central, but with Noah and travel restrictions and him not being able to breach I told him I’d pass this year. He said he’d FaceTime during Team Flash’s party so everyone could say hi.”

She lets that hang there for him to digest.

“Just if you’re interested.”


	8. December 25th, 2020

He and Lisa return to their separate rooms around 1:30 and Leonard tries to sleep.

Tries.

He tries so hard to close his eyes and sleep away the thoughts of a chance tomorrow to go back. He tries to push away Lisa’s point that it has been close to a year since he woke up in that hospital. He has seen the changes to the world (and seriously, WHAT is up with everything??? How bad has the team fucked up lately that all of 2020 has been half a breath away from a full out apocalypse?) and he has more or less found a place within this new world.

But, has he really?

He can tell himself whatever he likes, but the fact of the matter is that he’s been hiding out at his sister’s apartment for close to a year and finding every excuse to not shake his friends undoubtedly already unstable world.

To not intrude on the progress Mick seems to have finally made on not lighting everyone in the room on fire.

To not mess up Sara’s relationship.

To not make everything worse.

He rolls his lips tight and closes his eyes, shuddering his next breath quietly as a few tears start to rebel against his emotional walls.

Mick… He spent his entire life keeping Mick in check. He needed to, or he thought he did anyway. But without him Mick was able to create an actual stable life. He made a career with his novels; the pretty words Leonard always mocked him for. They’re better now too. He always knew Mick was smarter than most people – sometimes himself included – gave him credit for but reading those novels and seeing the complexity of Mick’s inner mind splayed out on a page…

Without him around to hold his leash Mick has grown and found some sort of peace. His public acknowledgement of being Rebecca Silver is proof of that.

Lisa is someone else he spent his entire life “protecting”. He taught her to fight, he made sure she stayed away from the exceptionally dangerous parts of the underworld, but he also let her accept that her and him were never going to have any sort of normal life. They don’t know how to do that. They aren’t meant for it. He told her these things over, and over, and over again. It was supposed to be so she wouldn’t feel the despair. So she wouldn’t feel guilty or ashamed when forced to talk about the shithole she comes from. It was so she would never feel the disappointment of not getting to do normal things because her rap sheet was three miles too long.

But he died, and look what happened.

She got out.

No more heists, no more scams. An honest job in a little flower shop and a little girl who adores her.

Both Lisa and Mick are clearly leaps and bounds better off without him, and he has to sniffle as his mind decides to remind him that despite this he is in Lisa’s apartment. He’s been here for a year.

And then some tiny seed of optimism in his mind; has he not helped?

He’s helped Noah with her math, he’s done the grocery shopping. He’s done his share of the chores. No, he hasn’t made anything worse.

But, then again, he didn’t think he was making things worse before now did he?

He shudders and turns his thoughts to Sara.

Apart from taking over as Captain and dating Ava he doesn’t know much about her life now. He likes to think that before he died he improved her life a little bit. He knows he was a pillar of sanity on that ship for her back when Rip was in charge; she was the same for him. He’s the one who was pleading with her that she wasn’t a killer anymore when she had Stein in her sights. Maybe he didn’t know her long enough to ruin her life.

Or, maybe he did, if he were to go back now that is. Regardless of if she ever had feelings for him or not – and he is at least 86% certain that she did - he did have feelings for her and he made them known. If he went back now it could cause a rift between her and Ava, considering Ava’s “condolence” card in regards to Oliver did not give the impression she would be ok with someone Sara may have once had feelings for reentering the picture.

Especially not someone who does still have feelings for Sara.

At least he can admit that to himself.

He dozes off while thinking about that, and when he wakes up it is far too early and his only warning is the sound of his door creaking open before there is a light but still surprising weight suddenly on his chest. He blinks his eyes open and his body jolts in surprise, though he isn’t sure why. The weight had been far too light to be Noah, and the evil giggles are coming from beside him.

Lucky appears more offended by his jolting than the fact that Noah had thrown him.

“Merry Christmas!!” Noah cheers through her giggles as he sits up, Lucky climbing down his body and eventually leaping from the bed to the floor.

He yawns and rubs his eyes, swinging his legs over the bed. Soon as he’s made the mistake of bringing his arm back down Noah is grabbing at his hand, pulling hard.

“Come on! I want to see if Santa came!”

He chuckles and stands, allowing her to lead him into the hallway just in time to see Lisa emerging from the bathroom looking very much like she is still mostly asleep.

“Morning.” He greets her and she simply groans.

“Come on!!” Noah exclaims, jumping from his hand to Lisa’s.

Leonard snickers as Lisa stumbles forward, half-heartedly telling Noah to stop pulling her. While Noah gasps at the sight of the presents that appeared under the tree overnight and rushes into the living room Leonard makes his way for the kitchen. He puts on a pot for coffee and leans with his back against the counter, watching as Noah excitedly points out to Lisa all the different rooms in the large dollhouse against the wall with a bow on it’s roof.

“Hurry up Lenny!” Noah shouts for him and he smirks.

“You can start without me.”

They don’t, though he suspects that is more because Lisa makes Noah wait rather than the now six-year-old decides they should. There are only six Santa presents, but it seems like more because the dollhouse came with four dolls that Lisa wrapped all separately, plus they got some little things to put in a stocking, and even a small stocking for Lucky. All in all it’s a good Christmas morning, leaps and bounds better than any Christmas morning he’s ever had.

The day itself is pretty calm. Lisa insists on making a Christmas ham and Noah spends the majority of the day playing with her new toys. They keep the TV on all day playing Christmas movies and it’s nice. Peaceful.

Too bad Leonard is too distracted by the impending FaceTime call from Cisco to enjoy it.

It’s early in the evening when that call finally comes. He’s hiding out in his room, guilt gnawing away at him both for not confessing that he is alive as well as for even considering doing so. Mick and Sara are better off without him. Returning himself into their lives would only upend them. But… Is the alternative really fair to anyone? For him to live out the remainder of his days in hiding? Let Mick, Sara, and even Raymond, and Allen and the other idiots of S.T.A.R. Labs live thinking he did die at the Oculus? What will happen when he does eventually die? Does he really want to leave Lisa to burry him alone? With no one but maybe Noah to lean on in grief? And what if he goes out in some stupid way that ends up on the news? A job gone wrong or something. Mick and Sara will find out then that he’d survived the Oculus, and they will be twelve different kinds of pissed at him. They would want to know why he never told them.

He sighs. It’s morbid, but he knows he isn’t wrong.

His hand hovers above the doorknob for a moment before he forces himself to turn it. He takes a slow, hesitant step out of his room. He can hear Noah’s cheerful voice echoing throughout the living room as she talks about all the candy Santa left in her stocking, even the kinds Lisa doesn’t like her having. He isn’t worried about being seen when he pokes his head through the entryway; Lisa had promised him they would sit with the laptop facing away from the door in case he wanted to come out for a snack during the call.

True to her word her laptop is perched on one side of the little couch with the back of its screen against the armrest. She’s sitting cross-legged on the other cushion with Noah half in her lap, happily chatting away.

She looks up at him, her face falling at the sight of him and it must be his expression; he can’t imagine he’s coming off as any sense of casual right now.

He nods to her, and there is a question in her eyes as to if he is sure. He holds her gaze, silently answering that he is.

She smiles wide in a way that is very much for show and snakes her arms fully around Noah’s waist, pulling the little girl closer and kissing her cheek, making her giggle.

“Can I get a word in here, please?” She asks teasingly and he smirks, though he can feel his stomach knotting up as Lisa sets her sights back on the screen. “Thank you. Now I hate to drop a bomb on you guys on Christmas. But uh… Noah and I had a visitor this year.”

Leonard can only imagine the looks she’s getting on the other end of the call. They’re probably similar to Noah’s, looking up at her with total confusion. Lisa nods her head towards him and Noah follows the movement, her eyes widening because the two of them spent most of last night and today drilling into her not to mention him whatsoever. But he nods, and with a huge grin breaking out over her face she scrambles off Lisa’s lap, all while he can hear a chorus of voices asking Lisa what she’s talking about, asking if they got another cat, if everything is ok…

They all shut up soon as Lisa pivots the laptop and tilts back the screen to allow them to see him.

What he’s looking at is primarily Ramon and Snow, with Barry, Iris, and Joe West clustered in behind them.

They all look like they’ve seen a ghost.

Noah, more than excited for him to finally be facing people he’s sure she thinks are his friends, bounces excitedly into the frame of their end of the screen.

“It’s Lenny!” She cheers, “Aren’t you happy to see him?”

He snorts; he can’t help it. If only this kid knew the many layers behind what she has just asked.

Lisa sits up a little straighter and leans forward, taking Noah gently by the arm.

“Can you go play in your room for a little while?” She asks and Noah’s smile turns to a frown. “Please? Just while Lenny explains everything. I’ll come get you before we hang up.”

Noah groans, and marches off very dramatically, but she does march off.

He manages to smile at Lisa, grateful. It isn’t that he minds having Noah in here interjecting the story of how he survived with little tidbits about all the time they’ve spent together in the past year, if anything her innocence is a comfort. But, well, there is a time and a place for that, and this isn’t it.

They’re going to need to go through every detail.

And go through every detail they do, and Leonard can’t decide if it is painful or comical watching Barry and Cisco bicker back and forth with their questions and theories on temporal physics and Caitlin, Iris, and Joe continuously have to shush them to allow for him and Lisa to continue. By the end of it the five of them are just staring at each other, and Cisco is the one to make the first non-interrogational remark.

“Good thing Sara hasn’t finalized the headcount for the wedding.”

It’s said as a joke, because he doesn’t know about Sara. Len suspects Sara is half the reason Lisa sent Noah to her room; too much risk of her blurting something out. But joke or not there’s a seriousness behind it.

“The what?” He asks, and he hopes there isn’t any disappointment or hurt in his voice.

If there is he thinks the surprise masks it enough, because Cisco grins and seems so amused Len thinks he doesn’t even notice that Lisa’s lips have also parted into a frown.

“Yeah, you’ve kind of missed a lot. Short version is Sara’s been with this girl Ava for like two or three years and they’re getting married in April. Which reminds me, you want to be my plus one Lisa?”

Leonard will never, ever again be thankful that is his sister has some weird on and off relationship with Cisco Ramon of all people. But he’ll be grateful this one time. Because all the disapproving glares are on the inventor with poor timing, or on Lisa, but not on him.

Thankfully, team Flash doesn’t see his heart sinking.

What does he do now? Tell them never mind, don’t contact the Legends? It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out from that he has some specific feelings towards Sara Lance, and supposedly the S.T.A.R. Labs crew are geniuses. He’s yet to see the evidence, but that is beside the point.

But what other option does he have? He can’t contact the team, not now. He can’t… This would definitely add Sara to the list of people’s lives he’s ruined. Even if she never had any feelings for him, he did and still does have feeling for her. Ava won’t like that, not with the wedding approaching and he’s sure she’s facing some wedding stress. No, this would be the absolute worst time for an unnecessary complication such as his return.

Suddenly he realizes how quiet the other end of the call has gotten, all of Team Flash is staring at him.

“Snart?” Snow is the one to break the silence, and what is he supposed to say?

He has no idea, so he doesn’t say anything.

He simply turns and heads back to his room.


	9. January 3rd, 2021

Leonard is sitting on his bed when Lisa cracks his door open after knocking softly.

“Hey.”

“You told them?” He asks, though he knows the answer. The walls in this apartment aren’t exactly sound proof.

“You walked right out of the room, what was I supposed to tell them?”

Fair enough.

She closes his door behind her and comes and takes a seat next to him. She moves slowly, carefully, pulling her legs up and crossing them.

“I just told them you and Sara have a history.” She explains, “And to hold off on contacting the Legends until I talked to you. See what you want to do, given the circumstances.”

What he wants to do, he wants to scoff at that notion.

What he wants to do and what he should do are two vastly different things.

He wants to go back. He wants to get to know Ava. He wants to understand what Sara sees in her. He wants to find some evidence that Ava is the right person for her, and if he can’t then he wants to beg Sara not to go through with it. He wants to ask if she’s ever thought about the future he asked for before The Oculus, if she ever wished even just once that they could’ve tried it out.

But that is not what he should do.

He should leave well enough alone. Sara has found happiness, love, he shouldn’t ruin that. The tricky thing is he also shouldn’t just not tell her he’s alive. He still stands by that decision. She, Mick, Raymond, none of the Legends he left behind deserves to find out the hard way that he didn’t die in that bomb. None of them deserve to hear about his real death in the obituaries years down the line.

But to just drop in with Sara’s wedding approaching….

He could wait, until after. But suddenly the thought of being in this closet bedroom in Lisa’s little apartment for almost five more months feels like standing on a pressure plate. Allen and his friends know. They know everything. They know he’s alive and about his feelings towards Sara. They won’t be able to sit on this secret for five months, not if he’s sitting still.

He needs to do something.

“Do they know what happened to the rest of my team?”

His team has been a strategically avoided subject over the past year. After that first weekend when they established he needed time to sort through this new world, especially since he remembers the world pre-crisis.

He asked Lisa about the Crisis once in those early days. She knows it happened, but her memories are those of a post-Crisis world.

She nods, “I know a few too.” She admits, and that doesn’t really surprise him. He got the sense early on that she might know the fates of some of the original Legends, but he’d avoided asking.

He wasn’t sure he could take it.

“Were they even the people I remember?”

She nods, “Crisis changed a lot, according to Cisco, but far as he could tell your team’s timeline stayed pretty consistent.”

Good, that’s one less shock to prepare his system for.

“What do you know?”

She tells him about Stein and Jax first. How Stein retired from the Legends so that he could spend more time with his family; apparently he has a daughter and a grandson in this timeline. Jax stayed with the team a little longer but ultimately chose to take a break from time travel in order to start up a life. She tells him that Rip died on a mission, or she assumes it was a mission anyway. Cisco told her when he found out and she didn’t ask for details.

“I don’t know what happened to the hawk people.” She concludes, “I’ve never seen them on the news or heard about them being at the big crossovers, but I think I would’ve heard if they’d died.”

He nods, idly wondering about their fate. Carter might be dead. Last time Leonard saw him he had been brainwashed by Savage, and Kendra… She could take a lot, but Savage always seemed to have the upper hand against her. He’s killed her 200-something times if Leonard recalls correctly, a “if I can’t have you then no one can” philosophy, and he had her in his grips while the team was at The Vanishing Point.

There’s no telling what he could’ve done to her.

Lisa’s phone buzzes then with a text, and a frown crosses her face when she looks at it.

“It’s Cisco.” She says, tone and face both guilty. “He just wants us to let him know whenever you figure out what you want to do.”

He nods, and it’s confirmation that he’s right. Allen and his friends want to help, and they are incapable of letting things sit still. He has to do something.

“Stein still live in Central?”

Lisa nods a positive, so he presses his lips together, thinking.

“Ask Cisco if he knows how concerned he is over keeping distance. Maybe I’ll pay him a visit.”

Him or Jax. Both halves of Firestorm were fairly close with Sara, but the Professor will give him a more frank opinion about everything that is going on. Jax would be honest, but there would be much more tact. Loath as he is to admit it Leonard knows when he needs a kick in the ass, regardless of the direction, and Stein’s unfiltered opinions might do just the trick.

* * *

“Do you have to go?” Noah questions over breakfast, butting into his and Lisa’s conversation of what time he should be at the train station.

It’s been a week since Christmas and he’s planning to head out for Central tomorrow. That being said, he hesitates with answering Noah’s question.

“Yes he does.” Lisa answers for him, and while Noah seems genuinely offended by the quick answer Leonard’s expression is much less wounded, though very unimpressed.

“You know if you wanted me out of your house all you had to do was ask.”

“No!” Noah whines, loudly, leaning partway over the table and almost into her cereal.

Lisa rolls her eyes dramatically. “You know I don’t want you out of the house. But we already told Cisco you would go, after New Year’s, meaning he is going to call Stein on the fourth and ask how it went.”

“Why can’t Lenny just _call_ Mr. Stein?”

For the record, Leonard has every intention of getting on that train tomorrow and physically going to see Stein, if for no other reason than he has already revealed his survival over FaceTime once and it is much more fun to do it in person. That being said there’s no harm in raising his eyebrows at Lisa, silently telling her that Noah does make a valid point and he could call Stein from here and explain the whole thing.

Lisa, of course, sees right through it and gets up to start the dishes rather than continue to play into the conversation.

Still, Leonard isn’t so stupid as to believe the conversation is really over.

It’s later, after dinner, when he’s in his room and packing up his bag with Noah sitting on the foot of his bed that it finally continues.

“When are you coming back?”

“I don’t know.” He answers, “I’m going to see what Stein can tell me about what I’ve missed, and then maybe I’ll go visit another friend.”

Or hide out alone in one of the safe houses Lisa was helpful enough to give him the new address for. That option is far more likely.

“Like Sara?” Noah asks with a sly grin on her face.

They haven’t told her yet that Sara is getting married. They will, at some point, because Lisa agreed to go with Cisco and she may or may not end up bringing Noah along. But they haven’t yet because… Well, he likes to think it’s to spare him that conversation.

“Maybe.” He sighs, “But I have other friends who think I died, like Mick.”

Noah giggles, “Yeah, but you don’t _love_ Mick.” She taunts and he sighs, and continues packing his bag.

* * *

Two days and three trains later Leonard finds himself walking down a suburban street in one of Central City’s nicer neighborhoods. He’s already dropped his bag off at the safe house and while he was there he debated staying put. But Lisa was right about Cisco and how he will be dying to know how this little reunion has gone, so he should probably do everyone a favor and show up.

He finds the address easily enough. It’s a big house but unassuming nestled between the others of the neighborhood. It’s when he is making his way up the front pathway to the door that Leonard finds himself stopping, his plan ruined, because the door is opening.

And Stein is there, his jaw agape.

For a moment the two of them just stare at each other. Stein’s expression soon turns to an open-mouthed grin and that is more of a relief than he would like to admit. Stein is happy to see him. Not angry, but happy.

“When Mr. Ramon called me I almost didn’t believe it.” Right, of course Cisco called. “But, I have seen the impossible before.”

Leonard smirks, though he doesn’t totally know why. It’s partly because he knows how true that statement is. In their former line of work the impossible may as well be a monthly occurrence.

And it’s partly because the look of delighted awe on Stein’s face is better than any shell shock his being alive could ever inflict.

When Stein brings him inside he isn’t even surprised to find Jax in the living room waiting for him. The younger man pulls him into an almost brotherly hug, telling him he also couldn’t believe it when he heard the news.

“I hope Cisco didn’t blab to everyone.” He comments as they sit down, him and Jax on the couch and Stein in a chair adjacent to them.

“As far as we know he only told Grey.” Jax promises, “Grey told me.”

“And I didn’t tell anyone else.” The Professor quickly puts in, “I figured that would be your job.”

Leonard smiles gratefully, and the next few minutes are filled with being caught up on the events of the past year. Both Jax and Stein are, understandably, a little less thrilled to learn he has been back for that long and has only just now decided to return to their little network of people, but they don’t give him much crap.

“So, I suppose the question is Mr. Snart, what do you know?”

He takes a breath, trying to come up with the best answer for that.

“I know Hunter’s dead.” He starts, “And aside from the two of you with your retirement I know what was covered in the Star City documentary and the Legends’ one.”

He doesn’t miss how Stein’s eye contact with him slips when he mentions the second documentary, or how Jax reaches over to the side table for a sip of a drink he has there.

“And Cisco mentioned Sara and her girlfriend are tying the knot.”

Jax is about to put his drink down, but he brings it back to his lips instead, and Stein glares at him.

“Well then,” Stein says, leaning forward and clasping his hands together. “It appears that we have a lot to catch you up on.”

And catch him up they do. Stein tells him what happened at the end of the original mission to start things off. The team defeated Savage, three times over, and with him out of the picture Kendra and Carter flew off to set down roots. They live in Keystone and have a daughter named Miranda, and last Stein heard they had a second kid on the way.

Since then new Legends have come and gone from the team; Nate Heywood, Amaya Jiwe, Behrad Tarazi, Wally West, Nora Darhk, John Constantine, Gary Green, Ava Sharpe, and Charlie. Sara’s become the Captain, and Leonard smirks with pride at the mention, even if he already knew that.

Jax interjects here and there to point out things Stein hasn’t; such as Behrad’s sister Zari being part of the team now, and how there may or may not be an erased timeline where she had been a Legend in place of Behrad. They also catch him up on some other life events he’s missed, such as Lily’s existence and the birth of her son. They tell him about the Time Bureau Rip started, and how he died taking down Mallus. They tell him that Raymond married Nora Darhk and the two of them are living on the outskirts of Star City helping troubled kids, which is somehow a very Raymond thing to do.

“And, of course.” Stein says when the conversation feels like it is nearing it’s end. “As you mentioned, there is the upcoming wedding.”

Yeah, there is that.

What interests him about it though is the way Jax very pointedly looks at the floor when the topic is brought up, as well as the way Stein glares at him.

“Cisco only told me it’s happening in April.” He says carefully, one eye on Jax next to him and the other on Stein. “That a good thing or a bad thing?”

“Good.”

“Bad.”

The two halves of Firestorm – or, former halves, according to their story - glare hard at each other with the differing responses, until Stein gives a sigh.

“You’ll have to excuse Jefferson, he’s been having trouble putting aside his personal opinions regarding Ms. Lance’s relationship.”

“I shouldn’t have to put aside any personal opinions when someone’s getting married, especially Sara.”

Huh.

Stein rolls his eyes in the most put-upon expression (which for him really is saying something) and then looks to Leonard.

“Jefferson feels that Ms. Lance and Ms. Sharpe are not quite suited to each other.”

“You agree with me!” Jax accuses, and Leonard is going to pointedly ignore the way the comment makes his heart feel like it’s been lifted. He should be happy for Sara.

Apparently, Stein shares that sentiment.

“It is not our place to decide who is a suited match to Ms. Lance.”

Jax rolls his eyes, and Leonard waits a breath to see if Stein is going to explain further, and then he asks.

“What gives you the idea they’re not right for each other?”  
The two of them exchange another glance, and while that is going on Leonard thinks to himself that it’s almost disappointing that Stein has apparently at some point in the last four years learned how to keep his opinions to himself.

It isn’t even Stein who answers him, it’s Jax.

Looks like he was wrong about who will be giving him an unfiltered kick in the ass.

“Look, at first, I didn’t mind Ava. She was alright, for a little while-”

“You weren’t there for longer than a little while.” Stein interjects, and Jax rolls his eyes.

“I talk to Rory.” He defends, “And according to him the two of them ran their course a long time ago.”

“Apparently they did break up for a short time two years ago.” Stein says, “I must say that, after what I’ve heard even from Ms. Lance herself, I was – admittedly - disappointed to hear when they reconciled.”

“And sent out the wedding invitations.” Jax scoffs, and this time Stein looks almost agreeable rather than scolding.

“What’s the problem with her?” Leonard asks, though he does already have his own opinions about what might be the problem.

For having been so gung-ho about speaking against Ava, Jax hesitates, and after a long moment Stein ends up being the one to answer.

“There isn’t any problem, exactly.” He says, “She’s just… They are very different. Granted my interactions with Ms. Sharpe have been brief, and she does seem to have loosened up quite a bit over the years-”

“But she likes to be in charge.” Jax interrupts, bluntly.

Leonard focuses his eyes squarely on the younger man with that, as does Stein.

“Not always in a bad way.” Jax goes on, “But she was Rip’s right hand at the Time Bureau, and took over after he died. When The Bureau went down she moved onto the ship, and Mick says she’s kind of been stepping on Sara’s toes as Captain.”

“And Sara lets her?” Leonard asks with a raised eyebrow, as that doesn’t sound anything like Sara.

But Jax shrugs.

“I don’t think she gets how bad it is. Sara was by herself for a while, after the pit. When the mission to kill Savage ended she was sleeping around while we were going through time.”

He pauses there, like he’s waiting for a reaction, but Leonard is careful not to give one.

“She liked Ava, and Ava liked her, and a lot of us…. We were just tired of seeing her lonely.”

“How do you know she was lonely?”

He can’t help but to ask the question, his words coated in a protective poison. All the time he spent with Sara on the original mission she never once gave him the impression she was lonely, not really. Not in the way Jax is talking about. She was looking for human connection sure, and she was looking for herself, but she wasn’t actively trying to fill some hole in her heart with romance.

Instead of answering Jax gapes at him, his jaw hinged open, and there’s something about the guilty look in his wide eyes that makes Leonard think… maybe he knows something he doesn’t.

But he won’t entertain that thought.

“Lonely may be a bit of an overstatement.” Stein says, “Ms. Lance once told me that being kissed for the first time since her resurrection felt like being kissed for the first time ever. One can only assume she faced the same anxiety when entering into a relationship, so some of the Legends may have given her some light encouragement.”

“We didn’t think she’d marry Ava.” Jax grumbles, slouching back against the couch and folding his arms over himself.

Stein keeps quiet, and that alone is unsettling. Something else about Stein that is unsettling is the way he is looking at Leonard, with the same guilty look Jax did when he questioned Sara being “lonely”. A part of him wonders if they would’ve pushed Sara to be with Ava had he been around, or if that even would’ve been a possibility. He also wonders if maybe either or both of them might be thinking the same thing he is; about what might have happened had he been there.

It doesn’t matter.

“Do the others agree with you?” He asks, “Do they think Sara marrying Ava is a bad idea?”

He needs to know, because if he has learned anything this past year it’s been that he is not always the best judge of what’s best for the people he lov-

The people he cares about.

“Rory does.” Jax grumbles, “The others… Ray’s too optimistic to see it, and Kendra doesn’t keep in touch. Everyone else, they didn’t know Sara before.”

Right, because just that much has changed. The majority of Sara’s current team didn’t know her before Ava entered the picture.

The majority.

“What about Amaya and Heywood?” He asks, eyes narrowed curiously. “You said they joined up a year before all the Time Bureau crap.”

“Ms. Jiwe has returned to her village in 1942.” Stein answers, “I’m not sure if she’ll be in attendance at the wedding, or if she even knows about it.”

Right, but that still leaves…

“Nate joined six months after the first mission.” Jax says, “He’s never seen Sara with someone else.”

Leonard furrows his brow. “I thought you said Ava’s her first relationship since the pit?”

The two of them look to each other, some silent debate taking place, before Stein finally sighs.

“She is.” He admits, “But… That doesn’t mean there wasn’t one of Ms. Lance’s flirtations who was… more in line with her personality.”

He narrows his eyes. He has a creeping feeling he knows where this is going, has for the majority of this conversation if he’s being honest. The way Stein and Jax are each looking at him is practically confirmation that he’s right, but he asks anyway.

“Which flirtation?” He asks carefully, and Jax rolls his eyes.

“Which do you think Snart?” He asks, and Leonard finds himself looking to the ground.

He looks at a nice, insignificant spot on the floor for a long, long time. He’s trying to process all of this. They think Sara was better off with him than with Ava. He wants to agree, of course he does, but what good would that do? She _is_ happy with Ava. Happy enough to marry her. Even if things aren’t perfect. Even if Jax and Stein - who haven’t been around to witness the majority of the relationship - think there are problems, so what? Sara’s an adult, and probably the most sound minded one he knows at that. She is more than capable of deciding for herself who is and who isn’t good for her.

Finally, Stein breaks the silence that has stretched on.

“I think that is enough gossiping for today.” He says, awkwardly dragging his hands along the cushion of his chair like he is trying to generate static. “Mr. Ramon mentioned you were staying with your sister in Gotham, Mr. Snart? How is she?”


	10. January 3rd-January 4th, 2021

When Leonard returns to the safe house he has no more clarity on what he’s planning to do next than he did going into his meeting with Jax and Stein. It’s a strange feeling, hearing that he isn’t the only one wary of Ava and Sara’s relationship. He had been assuming he would go in there and Stein would tell him how perfect Ava is. He had assumed he would hear about how happy she makes Sara and that the documentary had merely caught her on an off day. Or at the very least that what he saw in the documentary was true, but only evidence of how bad she is at expressing and dealing with feelings; and in real life she is actually very suited for Sara.

But that isn’t what happened.

Neither Jax nor Stein is exactly head over heels with the idea of the wedding. If anything they all but outright told him they feel he would be better for her.

He isn’t sure how he feels about that.

On one, very selfish, note he’s happy to hear it; if only because they were around during the aftermath of his “death” and so it’s possible they might know for certain whether or not Sara ever had feelings for him, and it might be a safe bet that she did.

However, on the other hand, Stein was right in what he said to Jax. Their opinions don’t matter. Sara’s is the only one that matters, and Leonard trusts that she knows how to form an accurate one.

Then again, he would also trust Stein and Jax to do that.

It’s clear that in the time he’s been away Sara and Jax have gotten closer. They were close during the original mission sure, but there was something in the way Jax sat on the very edge of the couch. Something about the way his jaw was set and his eyes almost permanently up towards the ceiling throughout everything that was said regarding Ava. Leonard would know that kind of quiet fury anywhere. It’s the anger of a brother who can’t open his mouth, lest he wants to invoke the wrath of his sister, likely for a repeat time if he’s biting his tongue even when she isn’t around.

Leonard has felt that particular brand of frustration many, many times throughout his life.

Stein… He never in a million years would’ve figured Stein could learn to bite his tongue. One thing he could always count on the Professor for was to tell him _exactly_ what his opinion is on any given issue, be it personal or professional. But somewhere over the course of the last for years something must have humbled the old man. It’s almost a pity.

Still, even with Stein biting his tongue his opinion was clearly in alignment with that of Jax, and that was pretty negative. Maybe he should go back.

He thinks about it while he idly browses through a take-out menu in one of the kitchen drawers. The name of the restaurant at the top is different than any he remembers ever going to but the menu items all seem staunchly familiar, it must be another change made by The Crisis. He selects his favorite combination and then while he’s waiting for an appropriate time to leave the apartment he thinks more about Jax and Stein’s opinions.

He thinks about it the entire walk to the take-out place, as well as the entire walk back, and by the time he is re-entering the apartment and closing the door behind him he has come to one decision.

He has no idea what he should do.

But, he might have an idea on how to decide.

Jax and Stein clearly know more than he does, but one thing that keeps ringing in his head is something Jax said.

_“I talk to Rory.”_

Mick is still on the team. Mick still sees Sara every day. He sees Ava with Sara, day in and day out. Not to mention that if anyone else deserves to know he’s alive it’s Mick.

As if to talk him into this before he can try to talk himself out of it his phone buzzes, and when he pulls it out it’s a text from Lisa.

_Cisco is asking if I’ve heard from you_

He frowns, and then for the purposes of sealing his fate he places his take-out box onto the counter and types back.

_Tell him to say whatever he has to. Get Mick, don’t let Sara know._

His thumb hovers over the tiny blue arrow for a moment long enough that he reconsiders, but in the end he sends the message.

He rummages around in the cabinets and pulls out a plate, then through the drawers for a fork. He won’t bother with a knife, there’s no point. He’s learned over the past year he’s better off slicing food with the side of his fork. It’s sloppier than he would like but he makes do, it isn’t like he has much of a choice.

After placing both the plate and the fork in the sink he manages to spray the dust off of them and then wipe them both down with a dishrag. By the time he has his food scooped out onto the plate there are two missed messages from Lisa.

_Ok._

_Mick will come by star labs tomorrow. Cisco told him to keep it quite._

S.T.A.R. Labs, meaning if he tries to blow this off Barry will come and drag him in because until he knows what he was called for Mick won’t leave.

Oh well, it’s probably for the best he has that hanging over his head.

He settles onto the couch with his dinner on the coffee table in front of him. This place doesn’t get cable, but he did make sure to get the Wi-Fi up before he came and he still has Lisa’s Netflix information so he downloads the app and logs in. Subconsciously he knows what he’s looking for. He scrolls down through all the new releases and the popular picks. Down through the comedies, dramas, and plenty of shows and movies he’s watched with Noah over this past year. Finally he comes to the documentaries section, and after a bit of scanning through he finds it.

_Meet the Legends._

He lets the description pop up and the trailer start to play, and of course that trailer starts off with Ava’s initial confessional about how she fought with the government to keep the Waverider from being impounded.

He sighs, deciding that it might be best to have the documentary fresh in his mind and his opinions as worked out as he can get them going into a conversation with Mick tomorrow.

It isn’t hard to keep his focus on Ava when she was evidently the one to have orchestrated the whole documentary. He still stands by his initial conclusion that it was a stupid decision, but at the same time he still can’t come up with an answer for what a better idea would have been given the circumstances of time travel already exposed. Not to mention that at the end of the premiere she was the one to say the whole thing was hoax.

Something he is confident she did for Sara’s sake.

He can’t bear to watch as Ava reads off that condolence card. Ok, so expressing feelings aren’t her thing, he can understand that, but he still cringes at her saying how she hoped Sara never loved Oliver Queen. Who is dead. And at the time has been dead for less than a week. It just… Noah has more sensitivity than that.

He keeps watching, still cringing as Ava tries to explain that she works better with gestures and she would rather find a way to resolve the current undead Russian maniac situation and move the Legends on “before they screw something up.”

That’s what gives him pause.

Before “they” screw something up.

Not to even touch the (understandable) complete lack of faith in that sentence, she evidently doesn’t think of herself as one of the Legends.

Ok, so what he’s gotten from the documentary thus far and then from Jax and Stein’s testimonies she is still new to being on the ship full time at this point, so maybe it’s fair she doesn’t think of herself as one of the team yet. Besides, it isn’t like he never called the rest of the team a group of idiots. He just did so with individuals singled out, and maybe that was worse.

He’ll have to ask Mick about it tomorrow.

He watches the rest of the documentary and at the end he looks away once again when Sara and Ava share a passionate kiss. Still, he can’t deny that Ava apologizes for her mistakes, and Sara forgives her. He can’t deny that Sara looks happy. Truly, really happy. She isn’t held back by darkness any more, it’s clear to see on her face. She’s freer than he remembers her. She’s lighter, happier. Even in the wake of Oliver’s death, once she’s gotten out her feelings on that matter she is able to push aside the grief and genuinely enjoy being on the team. The Waverider is very clearly much more than a place with a bed for her now. It’s her home.

And Ava is part of that home.

When Leonard goes to bed that night he has no idea why he’s surprised he can’t sleep. Who would be able to sleep in this situation? Every minute that ticks by is a minute closer to having to come face to face with Mick and tell him not only that he isn’t dead, but that he has been not dead for just under a year now. No matter how much Mick has changed Leonard knows he hasn’t changed enough that this is going to go over smoothly.

So he tosses and turns, and in the end he doesn’t think he sleeps much more than one very broken up hour and a half before he finally gives into temptation around seven a.m. and goes into his “recent calls” under FaceTime.

He taps Lisa’s name and after three rings he is greeted by the fuzzy outline of Lisa with her eyes closed and her face still half buried into her pillow.

“What?” She groans and he smirks.

“Sorry to interrupt your beauty sleep, but I thought your little friend would be awake by now.”

As though summoned by his words Noah pops up from behind Lisa, some of her hair hanging in a mess in her face and some of it sticking up in a static mess at all angles.

“I’m awake.” She chirps and he chuckles.

“Good, cause I need someone to remind me why it’s a good idea to tell my friends that I’m alive.”

Both Lisa and Noah groan in response to his words, both of them very dramatic.

“You gotta tell them!” Noah insists, “Didn’t you do that yesterday?”

He chuckles, “I told Stein and Jax yesterday, I’m supposed to tell Mick today.”

“Good.” Lisa huffs. “What’s the problem?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?”

Lisa groans, and Noah looks between her and the screen, obviously not getting it.

“He’s going to be mad I didn’t tell him sooner.” He explains.

“He’ll forgive you.” Noah assures him with a little shrug. “He’s gonna be happy to see you.”

He smirks; he wishes he could believe that.

He’s sure a part of Mick will be happy to see him; the problem is it will almost certainly be buried underneath a much angrier part.

“Len.” Lisa grumbles, “It’s Mick. He’ll punch you, he’ll yell at you for dying, he’ll yell some more for not telling him sooner, and then he’ll forgive you.”

That is probably exactly what will happen, and judging by the frightened look on Noah’s face she doesn’t like the sound of it.

“Is he really gonna punch you, Lenny?”

He shrugs, and sees Lisa snickering to herself.

“He might.” He says, “It’s ok. Sometimes when people are angry they do things without thinking, like punching. Haven’t you told me about kids at school getting in trouble for hitting?”

Or at least she told him that had happened; back when she was able to go to school for more than half a day and sit in her duct taped square six feet from the other kids.

She nods, “Is Mick gonna get in trouble?”

He and Lisa both laugh at that.

“He will.” Lisa promises, “If Cisco and Barry don’t punish him, I’ll call him and you and me can yell at him.”

Noah looks very pleased with that prospect, and truth be told Leonard wouldn’t mind seeing Mick on the phone getting chewed out by a six-year-old.

“But…” Lisa continues, “In order for there to even be a chance at that Lenny has to go and see Mick.”

The look Noah fixes him with, full of judgment and pleading all at once, Lisa really is starting to rub off on her.

“Fine, I’ll talk to you two later.”

“Bye Lenny!” Noah cheers, waving happily at him as Lisa smirks.

“Good luck, Jerk.”

* * *

Despite all of his anxieties Leonard knows that Lisa and Noah are right, he does have to face Mick and the sooner he does it the better. Besides, he’s already passed the point of no return. Lisa was one thing, but between Team Flash and Stein and Jax too many people know now for his return to be kept a secret. Sooner or later someone would slip up and Mick would find out; he might as well find out from him.

When he arrives at S.T.A.R. Labs Mick isn’t there yet. The entirety of Team Flash is, which is a challenge to face all on it’s own.

Barry approaches him first and pulls him into a hug.

He really should’ve just stayed dead.

Or at least in Gotham, dead to the world.

Oh well.

“Gotta admit.” Cisco says just as Barry lets him go. “I was wondering after Crisis if we were going to be seeing your face again.”

There is a warmth in the inventor’s eyes, a gleam of amusement with absolutely no hostility hiding beneath it. He is genuinely welcome here. With everything that’s changed in the last four – five actually – years, even though he hasn’t been here for it they’ve moved past being enemies. There’s no point in denying it. Maybe later he’ll swipe some little gadget just to prove he can, but he doesn’t _need_ to. Lisa is on the straight and narrow. Mick is on the side of the heroes and has been. Insisting that he doesn’t belong here would be pointless now.

“Sorry it took me so long.” He says and, he finds, he is.

Cisco smirks, but before anything else can be said a gruff voice comes calls from the hallway, getting closer.

“Scarlet?” It barks and Leonard’s heart sinks. It’s Mick. “Wat’cha call me for? What-?”

He stops in his tracks. He’s turned the corner and his words have died on his lips. Any that Snart might have had to say don’t even form in his mind. What is he supposed to say?

He sees a great variety of emotions flit across Mick’s face. Anger, hatred, sadness, grief, surprise, why is surprise so far down on the list?

He takes a step forward, his fingers spread out as though to signal that he means no harm.

“Mick.”

It must be the way he says it, or just the fact that he’s said anything at all, it snaps his old friend from his stupor. Whatever the reason Mick steps forward with a fist raised, and then stars erupt in his vision.


	11. January 4th-April 15th, 2021

“Mick!”

“Snart!”

“You bastard!”

Leonard hears the chorus of all of these shouts and more as he stumbles back. He feels two hands ghost over his arm and grimaces, but at least when he steadies himself on his feet the owner of the hands has the good sense to drop them. There are still shouts, mostly a mix of insults directed towards him and instructions for Mick to calm down. When he pulls his hand away from his face and blinks his vision back to clarity he sees that it’s Iris standing next to him, and that’s a bit of a comfort. If any of Team Flash has to have come within an inch of hovering over him he would rather it be her.

Barry is standing in front of Mick, blocking his path or at least that is what Leonard assumes the scarlet idiot thinks he’s doing. He knows Mick, if he _really_ wanted to pummel him into the ground he could barge right through Barry.

Judging by the fury in his eyes, he still might.

Cisco, Caitlin, and this new guy Ralph have backed off from the scene by now, a wise decision, and it doesn’t take too long for Barry and Iris to exchange a look and join them on the sidelines.

Ok, time to try this again.

“Mick.” He says, forcing himself to look his former partner in the eye. “I can explain.”

Mick flares his nostrils and huffs like an angry bull, which is fair. So he looks to Barry.

“Can you give us a minute?”

Barry looks wide-eyed to his other friends and the five of them host some silent conversation, which is oddly comforting as the first non-violent, predictable turn in events today. Caitlin is eventually the one to nod and not even a second later Iris begins leading the others out.

Leonard is sure the group of them doesn’t go far; in fact it wouldn’t surprise him if Cisco stayed pressed against the wall outside the door, listening in.

He’d be annoyed if he wasn’t also thinking it might be helpful to have a witness. He holds Mick’s eyes for a moment, trying to figure out how to play this. Mick is all but growling at him, a low rumbling in the back of his throat that Leonard learned to associate with forthcoming bodily harm long ago.

“I’ve already gotten the recap, a few times.” He says, “It’s been five years, the team isn’t the same as when I left it.”

Something flashes through Mick’s eyes then, some sort of hollowness. His whole demeanor seems to deflate, like he is trying to imagine what Leonard has been through coming back from the dead and to a completely different world.

He has never known Mick to care that much.

“No.” Mick eventually grumbles, “They’re not the same. But you didn’t leave. You died.”

His voice is calm, matter-of-fact, and somehow the most unnerving thing Leonard has come across since his initial discovery of how long he was gone for. Its proof of how much has changed, how much Mick alone has changed. The Mick he knew wouldn’t be talking to him right now; he’d be burning him.

Or - at the very least - rolling with his return and asking what he could burn.

“I didn’t mean to-”

“Bullshit.” Mick interrupts, “That’s exactly what you meant to do.”

“Only because if it wasn’t going to be me it would’ve been you.”

Mick takes a stalking step towards him, staring him down. He and Mick are the same height, have been ever since Leonard finally hit his growth spurt late in his teens, but sometimes when Mick gets in his space like this it doesn’t seem that way. He’d almost forgotten this past year what it feels like to have Mick acting completely of his own accord, and now Mick has been doing that for half a decade. He hasn’t held Mick’s leash in five years, there is no way he’s getting it back.

He is in completely uncharted territory.

“You’re an idiot.” Mick growls at him, and then he backs off.

Suddenly Leonard feels like he has just escaped death again, or maybe he’s only staved off the inevitable. Maybe Mick will change his mind about sparring him once he confesses he’s been alive and hiding out with Lisa for the past year.

Or maybe he will let him live, but also never let him live it down.

One of the two is definitely going to happen, no question.

But which option Mick will take is unclear as he leans himself against the rim of the monitoring desk and folds his arms over his chest.

“You said you got the recap?” He asks and Leonard nods, and then almost as a challenge Mick inclines his head forward.

“What do you know?”

Well, there isn’t much he can do now other than explain.

So he does, and predictably Mick does not take well to learning he’s been back since last January, not to mention that he went to the documentary premiere.

After a minor outburst following that reveal, he is allowed to continue.

He explains how he’s been staying with Lisa this past year and helping her with Noah, though to be frank it’s been more of Noah helping Lisa with keeping his head out of his ass. Mick finds that funny, at least. He then explains how he met up with Stein and Jax yesterday and everything they recapped for him, though he goes pretty light on their opinions of Sara’s upcoming wedding; for now.

Then it’s Mick’s turn to do the talking.

It turns out there is still a lot he hasn’t been told about what’s gone on in his absence. For example this isn’t the first time Mick has seen him since his death, in a manor of speaking.

“Back up.” He says when Mick starts transitioning off of the topic. “Since The Oculus you have seen me as a hallucination, a past version of myself, a doppelganger, and a doppelganger AI system?”

Mick shrugs, “I didn’t see the AI one.”

That hardly makes a difference.

“Still…” He drawls, “With all those false alarms taken into account, you were awful quick to punch me.”

Mick actually scoffs at that.

“You got one damn arm.”

Fair enough.

“Anyway.” Mick says, settling back in for the rest of his tale. “One more thing. You remember Ali?”

Leonard fights the urge to scowl.

Yes, he remembers Ali.

Five years ago if he heard the name he would have started reading Mick riot act. Don’t waste time on that girl, or any girl. She wants better than what you have to give; sooner or later she is going to get tired of you.

God, he really has been a horrible friend all these years.

“I remember.”

Mick straightens his back and crosses his arms, almost as if he is waiting for Leonard to pick up his long recited script for discussing Ali.

“Ran into her, on a mission back to ’04. Had some time after so her and me had some fun. We uh… We have a daughter, Lita, she’s seventeen.”

It takes an incredible amount of self-control to keep from dropping his head into his hand.

Mick is watching him, and he knows Mick is watching him. He is fully aware that Mick is staring him down and waiting for the “I told you so”. Which, to be fair, Leonard did tell him so several times over the course of thirty years. He told him a lot of things concerning Ali, but specifically he told him not to get her pregnant.

He nods. “Congratulations.”

Mick blinks like he can’t believe what he’s just heard.

“You two a thing?”

Mick frowns this time and shakes his head.

“Nah, been too long. Kind of knocked her up and left. She didn’t know about time travel yet.”

He raises an eyebrow.

“But she does now?”

Mick shrugs, “Told Lita, had to tell her.”

He’s about to ask about that, but Mick straightens up.

“Anyway,” He huffs, “What’s your plan now? Going back to hiding out with Lisa and the kid?”

There’s another question hidden in there, an “or…” and frankly Leonard both wishes Mick would ask it and is also grateful that he doesn’t.

“I don’t know.” He says, “With the team being what it is… I guess I just want to know what you think.”

Mick raises both his eyebrows, and ok, this may actually be the first time ever in which Leonard has bothered to ask Mick his opinion.

“Do you think I’d fit in with them?”

Mick huffs, “No offence Snart, but I don’t think you fit in with anyone. You ain’t built for that.”

True, as begrudging as Leonard finds that he is to admit it.

“Course, no one on that crew is built for fitting in.”

Leonard can’t tell if that is an invitation or a warning, or maybe both. Both is probably right. In any case the words hang in the heavy air between them for a long moment until Leonard finally concedes that there is only one bullet left to bite.

“How’s Sara?”

Mick sighs, settling his weight back against the desk even more than he already has.

“She’s good. She’s come a long way. You uh… You said The Professor told you about the wedding?”

He nods, “Cisco told me, Stein and Jax gave me the details.”

Mick grunts and scratches at his nose, trying to distract himself.

“Yeah, the kid doesn’t like her.”

He nods, and then after a beat, “Do you?”

The frown already on Mick’s face seems to deepen, his eyes becoming even more distant. This isn’t a side of Mick Leonard is overly familiar with. He isn’t used to Mick being thoughtful and taking his time like this, and certainly not when feelings are involved.

“Sometimes.” Mick finally answers, “She means well, most of the time. I don’t like her and Sara together though, too different.”

Yeah, that seems to be the consensus.

“Is Sara happy with her?”

Really, that’s all that he needs to know. He isn’t sure yet how knowing will shape his next decision, or if it even should, but he knows it will. If she is happy then he should have no problem going back. If she’s happy then Ava will have nothing to worry about, even if it takes some time for her to see it. So long as Sara is happy he is confidant everything will work out for the two of them.

If she isn’t happy… he isn’t sure what he should do if she isn’t happy. He can’t imagine she’s not, given that she’s getting married and for her that is no small feat.

“She thinks she is.” Mick answers, “She… I dunno, she says she loves Ava but… I remember the way she used to look at you. She doesn’t look at her the way she looked at you.”

That’s… Something.

The two of them are quiet then, Leonard processing what that implies. Sara is happy, to an extent, but his return could potentially make her question it.

“I gave her that ring you planted on me.” Mick says, cutting through his thoughts. “She still wears it.”

He says that like it’s supposed to convince him.

“Does Ava know?”

Know what specifically he isn’t sure. Know the history of that ring? Of him? Of what almost was?

Mick shrugs, “Probably.” He says, “At this point Boss should have told her.”

Mick stiffens with his own words and Leonard finds himself chuckling.

“Sorry.” Mick grumbles but Leonard waves it off.

“It had to go to someone.”

Really, it’s the first change he’s found since coming back that he doesn’t immediately have mixed feelings about. He’s happy to hear that Mick gave his moniker of “boss” to Sara, especially considering that Mick and Sara weren’t particularly close when he left.

It’s another testament to how much has changed over the past five years, how much his friends have moved on without him. Sara and Mick are much closer now, so much so that Mick will follow her lead devotedly, and take his time to sort out the right words when speaking against her.

It’s strange, but it’s good.

Until he asks the dreaded question.

“So what’s your next move Snart?”

Leonard gapes, his mouth opening and closing, trying to form around an answer.

He has no idea what his next move is; the only thing he knows is it isn’t any more clear to him now than it was this morning.

He supposes that’s answer enough.

“Don’t tell anyone I’m back.” He sighs, “Especially Sara. Not yet.”

Mick looks disappointed, understandably, but he nods. “When?”

He sets his jaw firm. “I don’t know. Maybe after the wedding.”

Mick looks even more disappointed by that, but straightens up.

“Suit yourself.”

He doesn’t say anything else, nor does he allow Leonard the chance to do so. He pushes himself off the desk and leaves, and Leonard hears him in the hallway shouting for Barry to move out of his way.

* * *

He should’ve known that wouldn’t be the last of it.

It’s Mick he’s talking about, and more so a new and improved Mick who is emotionally invested in the wellbeing’s of people he cares about.

People like Sara, and him.

In the weeks as the wedding approaches he hears from Mick on a regular basis. At first it’s to tell him about little spats or future plans he hears from Sara and Ava, things he knows Leonard won’t approve of. Only when Leonard tells him flat out to give the schoolyard gossip a rest does he switch over to outright pestering him to come back. He never threatens to tell Sara, though Leonard is always fearful he is just one bad argument away from pushing Mick to that.

The thing is, all of his arguments are bad ones and he knows it. They’re all the same. He can’t show up when she is set to get married so soon, it isn’t fair. Mick always counters that one by saying it is even less fair to wait until after she has entered into a legally binding commitment she can’t walk away from. He argues his presence shouldn’t make her want to walk away from her fiancée, Mick agues that if it does then what does that say about Ava and Sara’s relationship?

They go back and forth like this for months, closer and closer to the wedding date, and if he can just keep Mick from doing anything rash before the big day then they can discuss the possibility of him coming back.

But, if he’s being honest, it is getting harder to not side with Mick.

He does have a point that if Sara _were_ to choose him over Ava, her having entered into a marriage already would make things exponentially messier. He also has a point that she has a right to know what could’ve been between them could potentially still be. She has a right to know he still wants her, and furthermore Ava doesn’t deserve to be put through something like her new wife’s ex-something showing back up after the wedding when he could’ve done it before, and he does have to show back up sometime. Sara deserves to know he’s alive, as does Ray, and Kendra, and Carter. All of the people he left behind deserve to know he’s back, and maybe it would ultimately be best if they found out before a marriage takes place.

But Leonard Snart is nothing if not stubborn, so he tells himself that Sara is the best judge of what is right for her and if she has deemed that to be Ava then him showing back up after the wedding won’t cause any problems, but showing up before would only cause unnecessary drama.

So he keeps telling Mick, Lisa, Noah, Barry, Cisco, Iris, Caitlin, and most importantly himself that it will be for the best if he waits. He’ll tell Sara and everyone else in just two more months.

One more month.

Three more weeks.

Two weeks.

One week.

One weekend.

Then Mick barges into the safe house with a damn kid in tow.

It’s Mona, he recognizes her from the documentary. He knows soon as he sees her that this is Mick’s Hail Mary play. He gave up the Rebecca Silver identity last year and passed it onto Mona, meaning she’s a romantic.

It’s times likes this he wonders why he hasn’t added Mick’s murder to his rap sheet.

“You want me to give up?” Mick asks – challenges actually – as he walks deeper into the apartment.

Leonard won’t give him the satisfaction of rolling his eyes and instead cuts straight to glaring at him.

“I’d appreciate it.”

“Fine. Tell her.”

He glances over to Mona, the arm he still has settling across his body, because he would fold it with his other if he had his other. The poor kid looks like she’s being held hostage, and maybe she is. He can just picture Mick baring into the little apartment of his protégé when she is trying to prepare for her friend’s wedding this weekend, and kidnapping her by tossing her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

“Mona here’s got a moral compass to a fault.” Mick explains, while simultaneously making himself comfortable on the couch. “Hopeless lovebird too, and friends with The Suit. You tell her everything and she takes your side, I’ll let it go.”

Somehow he doubts that.

Maybe that’s why his heart practically leaps at the suggestion; maybe this is just the kick in the ass he needs. If he can hear from one of Ava’s friends that she and Sara aren’t right for each other, then maybe he can finally force himself to just go back before the wedding.

After all, it’s likely to be messy either way.

“You want to hear a story kid?” He asks and Mona, still looking more than a little confused by all this, shrugs.

“Sure.”


	12. April 15th-April 16th, 2021

“Whoa.”

Leonard supposes that isn’t the worst reaction he could’ve gotten to the story of what he and Sara used to be, as well as all the avoiding he’s been doing over the course of the last year. Of course it isn’t the best reaction either. The seconds that tick by while Mona is staring at him with her mouth agape and the whole story processing feel like they stretch on endlessly.

“So… You’ve been hiding from Sara for a year because you still love her, but you’re worried she doesn’t love you?”

He sucks in a breath; love isn’t exactly a word he has ever had a close relationship with. He has especially been doing his best to be careful of labeling what he feels for Sara as love. Or, more accurately, he has been doing his best to keep from acknowledging it.

“More or less.” He eventually admits, “Especially now that I know she’s getting married. I can’t mess up her happiness.”

“But what about your happiness?” She asks right away, nearly jumping on top of his words, and it surprises Leonard. The fact that Mick brought her here made him think ok, maybe she’ll end up on his side, but he wasn’t thinking she would jump on board so quickly.

“What about Ava’s happiness?” He asks, challenges really. “Don’t you want her to be happy?”

Mona seems to think about it for a moment, but something about the nature of the question makes Leonard think she isn’t really thinking too hard on the answer.

“Yeah, of course I do.” She eventually says, “But I don’t think she’d be very happy going through life always wondering if Sara has regrets about marrying her.”

Ouch, way to bring out the big guns right off the bat.

Mick must be thinking the same thing because he is looking at him with a very smug “I told you so” expression. Leonard does his best to keep from rolling his eyes and instead finds himself staring very intently on the floor much like a guilty child.

He can feel both Mona and Mick’s eyes on him, watching and waiting for him to make a decision.

One would really think he would be used to that feeling by now.

He sighs; this is going to be messy.

* * *

A lazy smirk creeps up on Sara’s features as her eyes crack open and the first thing she sees is Ava’s eyes closed in peaceful slumber. Her heart flutters with a mix of nerves and excitement. It’s crazy to think that she’s actually here, docked in the present for the occasion of her own wedding. That by itself is completely insane to think about. She gave up a long time ago on the hopes of ever getting married.

But, crazier things have happened.

Rolling over she snags her phone off her bedside table and sees the beige bar of a notification cutting through her picture of her and Ava, Jax’s name with the fire emoji in bold on the left side.

_Not to throw a wrench in your plans, but can we meet up today? Grey’s place?_

She smiles to herself and quickly types back.

_Of course, 2 work?_

She watches as the three dots appear right away, a little surprised considering the time stamp on his message was an hour old.

_Sure. Don’t bring Ava though, want to talk to you about something._

She frowns, a red flag starting to raise in her mind. She isn’t overly worried about it, for all she knows Jax might just want to do something just the two of them and Stein before she spends all of tomorrow with Ava and then they’re well into full wedding mode.

Still, she should make sure.

_Everything ok?_

The three dots come and are replaced by a message even quicker this time.

_Yeah, just want to talk._

She still isn’t totally reassured, but she is assured enough that she is able to put her phone down and focus more on the way the blankets start to move over her as Ava stirs and scoots closer.

“Mmm, good morning.” Ava murmurs, sitting up and meeting Sara in a kiss.

“Morning.” Sara hums, “What do you have planned for today?”

“Not much.” Ava yawns as she pulls her arms in a stretch. “Why, you have plans?”

“Jax wants to meet up, just me, him, and I think Stein.”

Ava raises an eyebrow but Sara chuckles at the surprised look.

“Relax,” she teases, shoving her fiancée lightly in the shoulder. “Stein is like a second dad both to Jax and to me, and he knows it. He probably wants to go to lunch or something the three of us before the wedding completely dominates the weekend.”

She can’t help grinning as she thinks about it, both the wedding and the idea of spending an afternoon alone with Jax and Stein. She hasn’t kept in touch with them nearly as much as she should have ever since they retired and she misses them, a lot. It’ll be nice to have some time with just them.

Even if a part of her is sure Jax will ask her at least once if she is sure about Ava. He means well, she knows he does, even if his attempts to laugh off the question as a joke fall flat every time. She understands where his concern is coming from, he’s her brother in every sense but blood and she and Ava are two very different people; he just wants to be sure she’s happy.

And she is happy.

She is so happy that her grin stretches across the entirety of her face and her eyes close in pure bliss as Ava’s lips ghost their way over her neck, which she cranes to give better access to her fiancée.

“Ok.” Ava purrs against her skin, sending a buzz zapping down through her bones. “What time are you going?”

“Mmm, told Jax I’d meet them at two.”

She gasps as Ava pulls her lips from her neck, instead bringing them up to her ear to whisper her next words.

“So, what I’m hearing is, we have a few hours?”

* * *

At this point Leonard only has a few hours to talk everyone out of this terrible plan.

Mick must have predicted he would have second thoughts, because the _second_ he agreed to tell Sara about his survival before the wedding the asshole was on the phone with Jax and saying they needed to set up a meeting. Leonard was able to wrestle the phone away from his old friend and give Jax conditions for this meeting, at least.

Number one: Sara can’t know going into the meeting what is really going on; that he is alive. That is not the type of information she of all people should be getting over the phone.

Number two: Don’t worry her. All he wants is for her to show up to meet with him, but he doesn’t want her racing to wherever they decide to do this in a panic because of some made up danger. He considered it, at least that way she’d be braced for something to throw her world into a tailspin, but ultimately he decided her mind could probably make up a million and one potential scenarios for what Jax could want and it’ll be best if he doesn’t give her the impression that it will be bad. So don’t tell her there is a problem.

Number three: Don’t get her hopes up. He also doesn’t want her coming into this thinking everything is perfect. So in the end he found himself asking Jax to tell him _exactly_ what he’s planning on saying to Sara to get her to show up, and they settled on a text asking to meet up to talk about ‘something’. Leonard still feels it’s a little foreboding, but they couldn’t come up with anything better and at least it doesn’t give the vibe that the world is coming to an end, again.

So Jax sent that text this morning, Mick returned with Mona to the Waverider with strict instructions for neither of them to say _anything_ to anyone _._ Team Flash doesn’t know yet, and Lisa…

He sighs, Lisa will find out any minute now.

After filling out all the necessary paperwork and whatever other hoops she had to go through to bring Noah out of state Lisa agreed to be Cisco’s plus one to the wedding and supposedly they spoke with Sara months ago about bringing Noah along as well, and of course Sara said yes.

_Knock, knock._

Right on cue.

He doesn’t need to answer the door, Lisa still has her key to this safe house, and before he knows it the door is swinging open and…

“LENNY!”

He smiles as Noah comes running into the apartment, her little suitcase bouncing in clunky thumps behind her before she abandons it entirely and stretches up as he bends down to her. She wraps her noodle arms around his shoulders and he hoists her up against his side.

“Hey kiddo.” He says while Lisa closes the apartment door. “Hope you haven’t turned my room into a playroom yet.”

Lisa hums as she approaches them. “There might be an art easel in there. We’ve been hoping you won’t need it again.”

She’s raising an eyebrow at him, and even Noah is looking at him with high expectations for an answer.

“No promises.” He sighs as he sets Noah back on the ground. “But… I am telling Sara later today I’m alive. After that the worst will be over so I’ll tell everyone else.”

Lisa looks stunned, while Noah gasps with her entire face aglow.

“Yes!” She cheers, pulling her fists to her chest in victory. “I knew you’d tell her!”

Somehow he gets the feeling that she isn’t the only one with that sentiment.

Lisa looks a little less excited, certainly far less so than he had been preparing himself for. She still has this air of cautious pride around her, but there is a heavy emphasis on the caution. He tries to tell her with a look that he is ok with this decision but he isn’t sure it comes across, or if it does it isn’t addressing the right concerns. She isn’t worried about whether he is ok now; she’s worried about whether he’ll be ok at the end of today or not.

He’s worried about that too.

“Lenny!” Noah pipes up, pulling him and Lisa out of their silent exchange. “Do you want to see my pretty dress for the wedding?”

“Sure,” He snickers, and he points to the doorway into the back hall. “Bathroom’s through there. Why don’t you go try it on?”

Her face lights up even brighter than before, and she seizes her suitcase and goes running for the doorway, suitcase bouncing off the corner as she rounds it at high speed.

Lisa is a mix of rolling her eyes and laughing as they watch Noah go.

“It was a long three train rides.” She sighs and he snickers, he can only imagine.

It’s automatic that he turns for the couch and Lisa follows his lead, and she doesn’t wait until they are seated to broach the topic.

“So you’re finally coming clean?”

“Have to sometime.” He says as they sit down. “I just hope now is the right time.”

“Well if you ask me the right time was six months ago, at least.” Lisa remarks and he rolls his eyes. “But I am glad you’re doing it now.”

He nods, and he can see the worry in her eyes; a worry that he shares.

“I need help!” Noah’s voice comes shouting from the hall, and suddenly the time for fearing what may come later on today is over, for now.

* * *

Walking down the streets of Central City suburbia Sara has only a small pit of anxiety in her stomach and she’s chalking it up to not knowing what this meet-up is about. She’s sure it’s nothing, but at the same time the fact that Jax didn’t tell her does make her wonder. It’s comforting that Jax was fine with waiting until the afternoon to meet up, as that means there is no imminent danger and the chances that someone is dead or dying are slim. Not zero but slim.

Of course, she starts to rethink that soon as she sees his face.

She knocks on Stein’s door with a smile, all ready to pull whichever former half of Firestorm answers into a hug, but she squashes that plan like a bug because Jax can barely meet her eyes.

“What’s wrong?” She demands, her mind already racing through a million and one worst-case scenarios.

“Nothing.” Jax promises, “Uh, come in.”

She isn’t convinced, at all, but it does put her mind the tiniest bit at ease to be let into the house and see Martin standing in the middle of the living room with a hugely false smile on his face.

“Sara! How are you?” He asks as he moves to hug her, and that puts her even more at ease, and simultaneously extremely on edge. She knows a guilty Martin Stein when she sees one, and this is the textbook definition.

“I’m good…” She trails, looking between the two of them and trying to guess what bad, non-world ending news they called her here to receive. “What about you guys?”

“Oh, we’ve been fine! I’ve been helping Lily with her latest research project and I must say it’s quite fascinating.”

She doesn’t miss how Jax rolls his eyes; he’s never had the patience for Stein’s stalling even when he is a part of the mischief.

But he doesn’t try and stop Stein, so she humors him as he leads her into the living room, happily babbling on and on about Lily’s latest project as well as Ronnie’s milestones. It’s when he starts to get into Clarissa taking a painting class that Jax has evidentially met his limit.

“Grey.” He interrupts, “Wasn’t there something else we were gonna talk to Sara about?”

Finally.

“Yes, you’re right, Jefferson.” Stein agrees, his words disjointed and slow compared to his easy ramblings about his family, and he leans forward a bit on the edge of his seat, getting himself closer to her. “Miss Lance, before we get into this I feel it is salient that you know we are only acting with your best interests at heart.”

She knits her brows together, and because it’s Stein he keeps talking.

“There has been a debate for months over whether it would be best to tell you this before or after your wedding, and truth be told there may not be a right answer to that question. But we feel you should know.”

Know what?

She looks to Jax, because she can always count on him to call Stein out when he is over exaggerating, but he is stoic as she’s ever seen him. His face is serious and thoughtful, and watching her intently.

She swallows a lump in her throat and looks back to Stein.

“What is it?”

He holds her gaze for a moment, and then finally his head bows, almost in shame, before he looks up and over towards the doorway to his kitchen.

“Come on out.”

Confused Sara looks to the doorway, her breath held tight in her lungs as she hears the creak of a floorboard as someone moves behind the wall.

Distantly, in the back of her mind, a child-like daydream flits through her thoughts of _what if?_


	13. April 16th, 2021

“Oh, and Ronnie has been doing very well in learning to ride his tricycle.”

Leonard is going to bash his head into the countertop.

This is what he gets for letting Stein help ease Sara into this.

She’s so close now, just a room away. Right on the other side of Stein’s kitchen wall she is sitting on the couch and listening to The Professor gloat about his grandson’s latest crowning achievement.

Now if only the old man would get on with it.

His stomach is rolling over itself, tumbling and churning and a part of him wants to run. But it’s too late to back out now. She’s already here, already knows something is up, and so he just wants to get it over with at this point. For better or for worse, he wants her to know already.

“Grey.” Jax’s voice suddenly rings in his ears, “Wasn’t there something else we were gonna talk to Sara about?”

He suddenly wishes Stein were still stalling.

“Yes, you’re right, Jefferson.”

No. No he’s wrong. Sara was only called here to catch up before the wedding, nothing more. He can’t…. This is a terrible idea. This is the worst idea he has ever had, what is he thinking?

And why isn’t he running out the back door by now?  
Because that wouldn’t be fair. Keeping his survival a secret would not be fair to anyone. Not to Sara, not to Ava, and not to him. She has to know. What she does the information will be her decision and he can worry about it later. Right now he just needs to-

“Come on out.”

Yeah, that.

He swallows a lump in his throat, doesn’t let himself breathe too loud. He wonders what she’s thinking right now, who she might be expecting to come out of this kitchen.

He takes a shaking step followed by another, and then he forces himself to take a third lest he wants to be half in the doorway and half not, like he’s hiding from her.

No, he enters the doorway fully, and he forces himself to look as her eyes enlarge and her lips part in surprise.

It is dead quiet.

Stein is watching him, Jax is watching her, then they switch who they are watching but he is only watching her, and she is only watching him.

He wants to throw up.

Seeing her in person for the first time in over a year - and so much closer this time – he can get a much better look at her than he could when she was on that stage at the theater. Her hair is definitely shorter than it was during his time with the Legends, though not significantly. It’s straight now too, not that she never wore it straight before but, when he thinks of her, he remembers her wavy half curls that would always mesmerize him.

Other than that he can’t pick out anything specific that has changed, but overall she looks… Better. More put together. Happy.

And it is all crumbling before his eyes.

He can see walls crashing down in her eyes. He can see her carefully constructed world unraveling, and it kills him.

“I don’t want to mess things up for you.” He says, his voice low and his arm half out in a show that he isn’t planning on coming any closer. “I know about Ava, I watched your guys’ documentary.”

She blinks, finally, the most reaction he’s seem from her. Still, blinking seems to bring her back to herself and her whole body jolts a bit, enough that she straightens up and her parted lips turn more into a gaping jaw.

He waits a second, but she doesn’t show any signs of further movement.

“I… There wasn’t going to be a good time to ‘come back’. I guess… I could’ve come back before, maybe I should have, I’m sorry.”

She still doesn’t say anything; she keeps looking at him, frozen completely. It’s a little unsettling.

“Sara?”

She blinks again and her mouth closes.

But other than that, still nothing.

“I’m gonna go.” He decides abruptly, because what else can he do here? Keep standing in the middle of the room hoping Sara sorts out whatever she’s thinking about him?

No thank you.

He starts to leave, and Jax tries to call him back but it doesn’t work. The only person he would stay in that tense room for would be Sara.

And she doesn’t say a word.

* * *

Sara isn’t proud of her reaction to Leonard’s return. Well, reaction might be an overstatement. It’s more of a lack of a reaction. A part of her thought maybe, when Stein called for someone to “come on out”, if only because who was she supposed to anticipate coming into the room? But she didn’t think it would really be him.

And it _is_ him.

It is undeniably him. He only has one arm, the other likely lost in the Oculus explosion. If that weren’t proof enough there is also the way he looked at her, the way he had spoken, his body language, everything about the Leonard Snart who came out of that kitchen was completely and totally _him._ Earth 1’s Leonard.

Her Leonard.

Or, he could’ve been her Leonard.

He mentioned that he could’ve come back before, that maybe he should have, and at the start of this bombshell Stein mentioned that there has been a debate going back and forth for a few months.

“How long?” She asks, the first words she can bring herself to say, long moments after he’s gone.

Jax and Stein look to each other, a silent discussion passing between them before Jax finally looks to her.

“We’ve known since January.” He says, and she feels a rock settle in her chest, and then Stein speaks up.

“But Mr. Snart reports that he was returned to the world at the conclusion of the Crisis you all faced. He has been staying with his sister for some time, adjusting to a new world and all.”

Sara honestly isn’t sure if all the oxygen in her body leaves it or freezes inside her lungs, all that she knows for sure is she has to focus a considerable amount of effort on breathing. The Crisis was last January. He’s been back for over a year.

And if he came back after the Crisis, even if he has been adjusting to an apparently new world, he might not be her Leonard at all.

Somehow that hurts even worse.

“Is he… Does he remember what the world was like before?”

Jax nods, and relief fills her chest like a light.

“We think he was trapped in the temporal zone after, well, you know.” He continues awkwardly, “And when things reset after Crisis it spit him out.”

The weight settles back in her chest. The explanation makes sense, about as much sense as anything will, but it still hurts because if he was in the temporal zone they could’ve found him. They _should’ve_ found him. There was never any body to be recovered at The Vanishing Point, why weren’t they looking for a body in the temporal zone? They found other debris all in the frozen atmosphere of The Vanishing Point, why didn’t they check for him too? Even if he wasn’t there, they should’ve looked somewhere. They should’ve had Gideon running a constant scan. They never should have given up.

“Sara.” It’s Stein who says her name, his voice serious and gentle, and his eyes imploring. “While I can’t imagine what is going through your mind right now, I would just like to say that Mr. Snart doesn’t want for his return to cause problems for you and Ms. Sharpe. In fact I believe that is why he waited so long to tell you.”

Oh right, Ava.

Leonard had said he knows about her, and Stein was clear the debate about this has mainly been over telling her before or after the wedding.

What is she even supposed to do in regards to that?

She should, she knows, go on as planned. She loves Ava, so much. No sudden turn in events can change that. But, she loved Leonard too at one point. At the very least she could have, if she’d had the chance.

Maybe, even without having the chance, she might have. A little. It could’ve been more, if he hadn’t died.

What the hell is she supposed to do with him turning up alive?

She nods to Stein’s words, slowly, and then rises to her feet.

“I’m should go too.” She says, and Jax and Stein get to their feet with her, almost like they mean to ask her to stay and let them help her work this out.

But they don’t say anything.

“Thank you guys.” She manages, but that’s all. So she gives them a firm nod and lets herself out.

* * *

“It doesn’t sound like it went _bad_.” Lisa comments and Leonard rolls his eyes.

“On what planet is what I just told you a good reaction?”

She shrugs, momentarily pausing in the coloring she’s been doing.

“I didn’t say good.” She defends, “But it could’ve gone worse.”

Maybe, though only if Sara had slapped him.

Actually that would’ve been better. At least that would have been some kind of reaction. He would’ve taken anything over her gaping at him like a fish suddenly thrust out of water. Happy or sad, or angry, whatever, anything. He would have happily taken any sort of show of emotion, even a violent and resentful one. At least that way he would know for certain how she feels.

But apparently his return to the world broke her, so he doesn’t get that assurance. He had thought once the truth came out all of his anxieties would be eased but instead he’s more on edge than ever. He’s faced her and he still has no idea how she feels about him.

What’s worse, he’s not sure she knows how she feels.

“So what now?” Noah asks, raising her head up from her picture.

Lisa snickers and tears a paper from the coloring book they’d brought; an outline of a bird with its wings spread, and passes it over to him.

“Now Lenny colors with us, and waits to hear from Sara.”


	14. April 16th, 2021-April 18th, 2021

Despite the sunny April weather Sara feels like her entire world is shrouded in fog on her way back to the ship. Over a year. Leonard has been back for over a year and he is just now coming back to them? And at the worst possible time! Seriously, what was he thinking? She knows Stein said he doesn’t want to cause problems for her and Ava but she can’t help thinking if that were true then he really should have come back sooner, or at least committed to waiting until after the wedding.

She just… What is she supposed to do? Not even touching on whatever the two of them were five years ago, what about the team? Will he want to come back? Will that complicate things further, for everyone? Or is he planning to stay in the present?

That would be a hell of a cruel joke; tell her he’s alive two days before her wedding and then tell her isn’t coming back.

Ok, so she wants him back.

That much she can bring herself to be sure of. She wants him back on the team, back on missions. She wants him calling bullshit on the bad plans again. She’s missed that, she’s needed that.

She’s missed and needed him.

That isn’t some cathartic realization. She’s known since his death that the team needs him and she misses him everyday, just like Mick does.

Mick.

He… Does he know? His best friend of thirty years is back from the dead and has been for a year. Jax and Stein know, and Lisa, and now her. Mick must know, right? There is no way that after everything the two of them have been through Leonard would let him be the last to know.

She arrives back at the ship with that thought and her stomach promptly sinks into a deep pit. A part of her is hoping Ava’s gone off with Mona or Gary somewhere so that she doesn’t have to face her yet. She needs time, just a little bit, to get her head on straight.

With a slightly shaking demeanor Sara climbs the ever-familiar path up the ramp of the ship and then the small flight of steps into the main level. She only gets around one corner before she catches a fleeting glimpse of someone walking at the end of the hall; Mick.

Suddenly she is seeing red.

If he does know, that means he’s been keeping it from her.

“Mick!” She means to call, but what comes out of her mouth is nothing short of a snarl, and when Mick takes one step back into the doorway his eyes are wide and he isn’t nearly as confused looking as she thinks he ought to be.

“Did you know?” She demands, marching up to him. She doesn’t stop until she is right in front of him, and it’s times like these when she is infuriated with him that she is reminded of how much smaller than him she is. It isn’t easy to stare someone down when you’re half a foot shorter than them.

But she has more than learned how to make do by now.

So she’s glaring up at him to stare him down, and she can see by the way he takes half a step back not only is it working, but he knows exactly what she’s talking about.

“Mick.” She growls, “Did. You. Know?”

“Only since January.”

She’s going to kill someone.

If not Leonard than Mick, or Stein or Jax, or anyone else who has known about this for months and not told her.

Aside from Lisa and the little girl she is evidently fostering, she wonders if there is anyone else.

“I tried getting him to tell you sooner.” Mick says, like it’s some sort of consolation.

It is, a bit. A part of her wishes that if he’s known all this time he had just told her, but she understands why he didn’t. That was Leonard’s choice to make.

Even if he made it at the worst time possible.

* * *

Leonard tries not to take it personally that they make it to Sunday, the wedding day, and he still hasn’t heard from Sara. It’s fine, what was he expecting anyway?

Ok, some reaction. Anything. Violent, happy, blaming, forgiving, hateful, grateful... anything. He was thinking she would give him _some_ insight into how she feels about him being alive.

But clearly that isn’t the case, and he can’t say he blames her.

“No!”

Lisa groans as Noah goes running off to his bedroom, leaving her standing in the middle of the living room in her dress and bare feet, her hair still not done, and they’re supposed to leave in an hour.

At this rate, that won’t be happening.

“Noah come on!” She tiredly calls, stomping to the edge of the doorway that leads to the apartment’s small hallway. “You’ve been so excited!”

Noah calls something back to Lisa but Leonard can’t hear it from the couch, though based on the defeated scowl on his sister’s face he’s guessing it wasn’t a comply.

“She can stay here with me.” He offers, “Not like I’m going.”

He knows Lisa isn’t _trying_ to look at him with pity, the two of them are always careful to never pity each other, but that’s all that’s coming through. He can’t say he blames her; his whole situation right now is pretty pitiful.

Instead of answering though she sighs and comes and sinks down next to him on the couch.

“I’m sorry Lenny.” She murmurs, propping her elbow on the armrest of the couch and her head in her hand. “Do you want me to stay too?”

He shakes his head. “No, you go. Have fun with Cisco, tell Sara we’re both glad she’s happy.”

Lisa purses her lips at that. He knows she has her own opinions on this whole thing, but between him and Noah voicing them runs too many risks of starting a fight.

He never thought he’d see the day when Lisa actively avoided starting a fight.

After another minute of the two of them sitting in silence she gets up.

“Ok.” She says, “I’m going to do my hair, and if she isn’t dressed by the time I’m done with that then she’s staying with you.”

* * *

Sara needs to be dressed by now.

She knows this, and even if she somehow forgot her phone is going off at random, constant times with questions about how long until she gets to the church.

She can’t stop thinking about how she never wanted to get married in a church.

It had been Ava’s idea, and all this time she has remained neither for nor against it. A church was never her ideal wedding venue, there was once a time in her life when she felt she might burn up the second she entered one. But that was a long time ago, and while she still isn’t particularly active in her religious practice aside from the occasional prayer she is long over her wariness of churches, mostly. Enough that she will go in them. Ava isn’t very religious at all, but she does believe in some higher power because as far as she is concerned that is the only explanation for how the team hasn’t managed to kill themselves yet. Which, ok, maybe she’s right. In any case she liked the idea of a more traditional ceremony and since Sara is technically Catholic they agreed on a church wedding.

Sara is starting to regret agreeing on a church wedding.

Not that she hates the idea in itself, but she had originally wanted a less traditional venue so that Stein could officiate without them running into the issue of needing to be in a temple because neither she nor Ava is Jewish.

She shakes her head to pull herself from the thoughts. It’s stupid. It doesn’t matter where she gets married. All that matters is that she gets married.

So why can’t she bring herself to get dressed?

There’s a knock on her door and she sucks in a breath, and when the door cracks open she is relieved to see that it’s only Laurel.

Not her Laurel, but honestly she isn’t sure she could handle that right now.

“You alright?” Laurel asks; her brow furrowed with genuine concern. She came over this morning to help out with getting ready. Sara slept here at her mom’s last night, claiming the superstition of “bad luck” if she sees Ava before the wedding.

She wonders if even Ava bought it.

Her mom at least pretended to, but when it became obvious this morning that she isn’t going to come clean about what’s really going on she excused herself to take care of details at the church as soon as Laurel arrived.

Well, she’s been avoiding this for an hour.

She sighs and sinks down at the foot of the guest bed.

“Your Sara was married, right?” She asks. She and Laurel made a pact that day they met at the hospital to do their best to keep from comparing each other to the sisters they knew. Somehow that came to mean not talking about them.

Laurel closes the door behind her, cautious as she steps forward.

“She was.” She confirms, “Why?”

Sara hesitates a moment, weighing the pros and cons of the conversation she is very seriously considering embarking on.

There are so many more cons than pros.

“Who was she married to?”

Laurel looks at her, taken aback, as she approaches the bed and sits down next to her.

“You’re not her.”

“I know.” She says, “But there was someone, a long time ago, who offered me a future, and I was planning on saying yes. But he died, and now he’s back.”

She watches as Laurel’s eyes widen, just a bit, and Sara wonders if it’s because she’s used the word “he”.

She knows very little about her counterpart. When she had the awkward conversation with Laurel about not having her be a bridesmaid the other woman had shrugged it off and said she was the maid of honor for her Sara and that was more than enough for her, thank you very much. She knows from a comment from Felicity that her counterpart had a kid, as well as that she carried it, and while that doesn’t necessarily mean her spouse was a man it does make it more likely.

Plus, she knows Barry and Iris were together on Earth 2. And Laurel and Oliver had their rollercoaster of a relationship, and every version of Harrison Wells is insufferable in one-way or another.

Maybe some things are meant to be.

Laurel rolls her lips together, the gears visibly turning in her head as she tries to plan out her next move, and thus making Sara feel all kinds of awful for bringing this up.

“My Sara was happy.” She eventually says, “She was a very different person than you are, who went through very different things. She met her husband in the Peace Corps.”

Sara nods; trying to imagine a version of Leonard who was so drastically different from the one she knows that he joined the Peace Corps. The only reason she can see it is because she’s known Leo.

“My Sara had her damages. To tell you the truth I think she only joined the Peace Corps because it could get her far away from mom and me. She came back a year later with him and she was so much happier.”

Sara smirks, that sounds like a familiar story, only with a different escape from the world and a far better ending than hers had.

“I don’t know what was between you and this guy whose come back from the dead. But, if you really want to draw comparisons, I remember the way my Sara looked at her husband.” Laurel reaches over and tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “You don’t look at Ava that way.”

That is every bit as reassuring as it is unsettling.

She keeps her eyes trained down on her lap for a long moment, thinking, debating whether or not to press for more information on who her doppelganger was married to.

Eventually, though, she decides that much doesn’t matter. She still isn’t totally sure of what she’s doing, but when she looks up Laurel is smirking at her.

“Go do whatever you need to do.” She says, giving her an encouraging little pat on the thigh before she stands. “This won’t be the first wedding I’ve stalled.”

* * *

Ava knows something is going to go wrong.

She isn’t sure what. Maybe it’s the way Sara’s been quiet since her afternoon with Jax and Stein with “wedding jitters” cited as her excuse, or if it’s just the general pattern life events involving the Legends seem to follow. She should be getting dressed, but instead she is pacing up and down the halls of the Waverider while shoveling yogurt into her mouth as she waits for the other shoe to drop.

“Ava?”

Oh, it’s coming in the form of Mona. Sure why not?

When she turns around she gasps, because Mona is all ready to go in her light pink chiffon dress with her hair curled and her lipstick applied. She looks so put together and yet something is off.

There is a glimmer in her eye, of worry and something else that Ava can’t place. Maybe it isn’t even there and she’s just working herself up, that would make sense.

“Ava why aren’t you dressed?”

“I know, I know I should be getting dressed!” She cringes, marching over to her friend at the end of the hallway. “I just can’t shake the feeling that something is going to go wrong and derail the whole wedding. And I know that’s crazy and I’m just psyching myself out but…”

She trails off, because this is supposed to be the part where Mona promises her everything is going to be fine and she is, in fact, just psyching herself out. This is supposed to be the part where Mona calms her down, and tells her everything is on schedule and will go on as planned.

But Mona is biting her lip and looking up at her with guilt in her eyes.

“What is it?” She asks, a whole new fear washing over her; fear that she is right. “What’s wrong?”

Mona opens her mouth but no sound comes out.

“Mona.”

“It’s… It’s complicated.” She says and Ava furrows her brow.

“What’s complicated?”

Mona opens her mouth again, but again sound doesn’t come out.

This time, however, Ava doesn’t prompt her. Instead she turns her head, because in the quiet of Mona not answering she hears the slightest of footsteps stopping at the other end of the hallway and when she turns Sara is standing there looking like she might be sick.

She chokes out four word; four words no one ever wants to hear, especially not on their wedding day.

“We need to talk.”


	15. April 18th, 2021

Sara feels like her feet are made of lead as she leads Ava back to their room.

She doesn’t know what she’s planning on saying, or even what outcome she is hoping for.

Or, rather, she does but she doesn’t want to admit it to herself.

For now she focuses on the door closing behind Ava. She stops in the room but Ava keeps moving, walking still out of her line of sight until Sara hears the quietest of creaks from mattress, and when she turns Ava is sitting on the edge, waiting.

Sara wonders if to some degree she knows what she’s waiting for.

There’s something about the sight of Ava sitting on the edge of their bed that seals the decision for Sara. It brings her back to the first time they had a serious conversation about their future, in the mattress department of Ava’s personal purgatory. They had talked about what they wanted, about settling down vs. not settling down. About what happens after the Waverider. Even then it hadn’t felt like they had really come to an agreement, but they’d moved on from it, together.

Sara sucks in a breath that is shaky and short, the tears already aching in her eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

She licks her lips. A lot of things. She is sorry for a lot of things. She’s sorry for what she is about to do. She’s sorry for not fighting harder, ever. She should have fought harder that day in purgatory for what she really wanted in life. But, at the time, what she really wanted was to not go through the rest of it alone, and to plan for past tomorrow again. Ava wanted that too. Ava had seemed so confident in planning past tomorrow and she thought maybe if she could just let Ava take the lead she would find a way to get on board.

She should’ve known then it would lead them here.

“Sara?”

Right, she hasn’t answered yet.

Ava is looking at her, her eyes near pleading, like she knows some semblance of what is coming and she is begging to get it over with.

That is the least she can do.

“I… Leonard’s alive.”

At first Ava doesn’t give much of a reaction.

She knows a limited amount about Leonard. She knows he was a legend, and she knows…

Sara rolls her lips together in an attempt to keep the guilt in.

When Ava had asked once if she and Leonard were close she had lied. She hadn’t wanted to get into it. She told her they were friends, told her that the one ring she never changes out belonged to him. She told her how he planted it on Mick before his death and Mick in turn gave it to her, because she was his friend too and he wanted her to have something to remember him by.

She knew calling them “friends” was a lie when Mick said it, but she’d repeated it all the same and told both herself and Ava it was accurate. After all, they never were anything more. They never got the chance.

Not until now.

“Leonard Snart?” Ava asks, “Your teammate who died on the Legends’ original mission? Sara that’s great.”

All in one moment the pain on Ava’s face gives way to fresh hope and then it falls away just as quickly, snuffed out by Sara’s frown and the look she is giving Ava to remind her that she is _sorry_.

“Isn’t it?”

She draws in a deep breath.

“I… Yeah, it is. I haven’t talked to him yet, I don’t know if he’s coming back but I um… There’s something you need to know, about him. And me.”

She sees it in Ava’s eyes, the exact instant in which it clicks in her brain what is going on here, and suddenly she can’t get the story out fast enough.

She tells her everything.

She tells her that Leonard Snart was the only person on the original mission whom she felt understood her. She tells her how he was her pillar of realism on a ship full of idealists, and Mick, and how before he died he had asked her if she would consider seeing what the future holds next with him. She tells her how she kissed him, how she mourned him, and through it all Ava sits silent.

“Ok.” Ava eventually says, with her gaze fixed outwards at nothing in particular, like she’s in a trance. She stands up and starts for the door, but before she reaches it she spins back around. “I just have one question.”

Sara nods, “What is it?”

“What about our future?” She asks, she hands moving to her hips. “What about the past three years we’ve spent together? I… I get that you and Leonard were… something, but Sara that was five years ago. You aren’t the person you were back then.

True, and her consideration of that must be evident on her face, because Ava takes a step forward and reaches out and takes Sara’s hands in hers.

“Baby, I know that we’re about to get married and a step like that is a scary one. So please, don’t throw away our future because of a ghost from your past.”

She looks up to meet Ava’s eyes and squeezes her hands lightly in her grip.

It does sound crazy when Ava puts it like that, but the craziest thing is that she’s wrong. Leonard is not a ghost.

Not anymore.

“What if he comes back?” She asks, and Ava looks at her with something akin to horror.

It’s the final affirmation she needs to be sure.

“Ava I love you.” She goes on, “But say we do go through with today? Leonard is still going to be alive, he might still want to come back to the Legends-”

“You don’t know that.”

“I know you wouldn’t be on board with it if he did.”

Ava looks away and reclaims her hands.

“No, I wouldn’t be.” She says the words firmly, almost like a challenge. “Could you blame me?”

“No.” Sara firmly, quickly, assures her. “No I couldn’t, which is why I know this isn’t going to work. I’m sorry Ava.” She murmurs, her voice breaking with the tears. “I just… Even if things have changed, I need him in my life; and I know I can’t have you both.”

Ava looks like she wants to argue that, but they both know she can’t. They both know that if they went through with today Ava would never be able to relax, especially not if Leonard were to return to the Legends. She would always be looking over her shoulder, always worrying about their marriage being on the rocks.

And maybe it’s for that very reason their marriage would always be on the rocks.

Sara sighs, a weight feeling like it has lifted from her stomach but settled now onto her chest.

“I’ll um… I’ll go tell everyone the wedding’s off.”

She hesitates for only a moment, just long enough to give Ava the opportunity to try and stop her.

But she doesn’t take it, and for that Sara is beyond grateful.

* * *

Let the record show Lisa knows exactly what is going on a good five minutes before she thinks most people would’ve gotten suspicious. She can’t put her finger on it, but there’s an air around the church. Or, maybe it’s a lack of an air. She has only ever been to one wedding in her life and it was a shot-gun wedding right after high school, so maybe she doesn’t have the best frame of reference, but she thinks the atmosphere in here is supposed to feel heavier. The knowledge that two peoples lives are about to change forever should hang a bigger aura around the church. But instead things feel almost relaxed; like that change isn’t going to take place, at least not here.

The ceremony is supposed to start at one o’clock, but it doesn’t. Everything is set out here. The church is decorated, the guests are seated, and the priest is standing at the altar waiting for the organ to start playing.

Except it doesn’t.

They wait two minutes, then five minutes, and then ten minutes before the priest starts to get nervous and asks everyone how they’re doing today.

That’s when Laurel comes through the side door.

She looks frazzled, is marching quickly towards the altar, and Lisa can tell by the quick and dismissive glance she gives the crowd that she is well aware all eyes are on her. She marches up to the priest and whispers something in his ear, and even from her seat in the back row Lisa can see his face pale before he turns out towards the crowd and clears his throat.

“It seems that we’re going to be a bit delayed today.” He says, “Apparently there is a robbery occurring at Central City Bank and the police blockade has interfered with traffic.”

Lisa knows she isn’t the only one here who knows that is a load of bull.

Regardless, Barry hastily excuses himself across the room and speeds out, suit and tie and all. Next to her Cisco pulls out his phone and opens up a monitoring app he most certainly created and pops an airpod into one ear.

“What’s going on?” He whispers into his phone, and while Barry is filling him in Lisa rolls her eyes.

“Is there really a robbery?” She finds herself sneering and Cisco nods, still focused on his phone.

Unbelievable.

“Ok man, let me know if you need back up.” He says, and then presses a mute button before looking to her. “Our friend Peek-a-Boo.”

Again, Lisa rolls her eyes.

She hasn’t talked with Shawna in awhile; she cuts ties with most everyone from the Central City underground not long after moving to Gotham. That being said she knows this can’t be a coincidence that Shawna is picking _right now_ to rob a bank, and she doubts Shawna has figured out the secret identities of Central City’s heroes to plan a heist when they’re all at a wedding.

She also knows Sara’s Earth-2 sister has a few ties to Central City’s less desirables, and she’s fairly certain Shawna is one of those ties.

Lovely.

Sure enough the bank heist is easy enough to stop once The Flash gets involved, and if Lisa weren’t already sure it had been a favor the stink eye Laurel gives Barry when he returns to the church confirms it.

They sit there for another half-hour, listening to the priest tell jokes and comment how the traffic will lift soon and they will be able to commence.

Idly, Lisa wonders if he has any idea that won’t be happening, or if he’s used to this.

Just when they’re coming up on the mark of forty-five minutes Laurel gets up again and shows the priest something on her phone, and while she has a harder time seeing his reaction this time due to Ray Palmer having moved to block her line of vision, she knows what it is.

“Ah… Well folks…” The priest begins to stutter, “It seems, ah, it seems a case of cold feet has won today. The brides have decided to call off the wedding.”

There is a chorus of ensuing whispers and murmurs, and Cisco turns to look at her with a question in his eyes.

She nods, he doesn’t need to ask verbally. They need to go, she needs to get to the safe house and get Noah, preferably before Sara gets there.

* * *

“Come on kid, you’ve gotta eat something.” Leonard says, trying to will the frustration from his voice.

After Lisa left for the wedding Noah threw a full blown tantrum, and frankly he still isn’t sure if she’s upset that the wedding is happening at all or that Lisa went to it without her. It’s probably a little of both in all honesty, and he can’t say he doesn’t sympathize with her.

So, after failing several times to calm her down Leonard did the one thing he had always wished his father would’ve done during tantrums, once he gave up all fantasies of Lewis trying to comfort his children of course.

He ignored her.

She was hell bent on staying in his room and making a disaster of his bed by throwing herself against the mattress, repeatedly. Fine, that was fine. He turned on the small TV in there and set it to the proper input for the DVD player and while she bellowed and screamed in the background he put in a copy of _Mrs. Doubtfire_. Probably not the ideal movie for a six-year-old, but it’s what he has.

He went back to the main area of the apartment and after a good twenty minutes he finally heard her cries temper out, and an hour later the door cracked open to reveal her with her eyes red and cheeks wet, still sniffling, but calm.

Now he’s just trying to convince her to eat lunch.

She didn’t want the reheated pizza from the other night, or a tuna sandwich, so now he’s resorted to offering to make her pasta and butter.

“I don’t want to.” She groans, her arms folding on top of the counter and her little head burying in them. “I don’t feel good.”

He frowns. Of course she doesn’t feel good. She just threw a grade-A fit and probably cried herself near sick. Plus despite the worst of her outburst being over he knows she is still upset.

That’s when a knock sounds at the door.

He sighs, knowing damn well it is probably Mick coming to try and drag him down to the church to beg for Sara to not go through with the wedding.

“We’re not done here.” He says before going to answer the door, fully ready to tell Mick and possibly Mona to get lost.

But when he opens the door it isn’t Mick or his little secret weapon.

It’s Lisa and Cisco.

Which is very confusing, considering Lisa normally walks right in.

“Are you and Noah still alone?” His sister asks, and with his face scrunched up in confusion he opens the door wider for her and Cisco to enter.

“Yes, why?” He drawls, suspicion rising inside of him.

Cisco looks at him seriously as he follows Lisa into the apartment, while Lisa marches over to Noah and ushers her down from her barstool.

“They called off the wedding.”

His heart drops.

His mouth goes dry, his brain stops functioning.

“We figured Sara is probably on her way here, she never showed up to the church.” Lisa supplies, coming up behind him with Noah in tow, and she suddenly looks a lot better than she was two minutes ago when she was claiming to be sick.

He knows he’s starring blankly like an idiot, but how the hell else is he supposed to respond to this? He never wanted to ruin her wedding day, and maybe he didn’t, but maybe he did.

“Do you know who called it off?” He manages to ask. If it was Sara or Ava who pulled the plug he isn’t sure if it makes much of a difference, either way it is likely his fault. But he just… If he could know…

But Lisa shakes her head.

“I would guess Sara. Laurel is the one who told the priest.”

He nods, and for a few seconds the four of them just stare at each other, Noah the only one who looks openly excited about this.

“Anyway, we’re gonna go.” Lisa says, giving Noah a little tug to follow as Cisco leads the way out of the apartment.

“What?!” Noah nearly shrieks, “I want to stay!”

“No.” Lisa growls, and before Noah can protest again Cisco and Lisa exchange a look and Cisco scoops Noah up over his shoulder.

“Come on.” He says, and Lisa closes the door behind them; flashing Leonard a look of _I don’t know what to tell you._

He doesn’t know either.

What he does know is Sara isn’t likely to come here, despite what Lisa and Cisco might think. No, when it comes to matters of the heart Sara isn’t exactly a charge in headfirst kind of person, one of the many similarities they share. So, instead of waiting for her, he considers where she might go.

Ava lives with her on the Waverider, for now, so she won’t be there. From what he knows about Ava from Mick and Jax, and a handful of other sources, she is a little more in favor of the whole normal life thing. Therefor he is willing to bet that in the light of a break-up she’ll be the one to leave the Waverider, meaning Sara will be giving her space right now to pack up her things.

He doesn’t think she would go all the way back to Star City right now, not with all her family and friends being here in Central at the moment. He supposes she might go to her mother’s, or wherever her father is staying. Maybe she won’t want to face anyone yet and she’ll go find a quiet bar…

No, a _quiet_ bar is absolutely out of the question.

* * *

Leonard gives it two hours before he leaves, and then another five minutes standing in the parking lot trying to brace himself for what he might find. But finally, for the first time in over a year, Leonard walks through the front door to Saints and Sinners.

It’s past happy hour and so the bar is reasonably crowded, but he’s still able to spot her right away. She’s sitting at the front corner of the bar with a beer in hand and a scowl on her face that warns even the stupidest of men to keep away from her lest they wish to have their internal organs removed.

Well, if he’s going to die doing something stupid – again – it may as well be this.

He’s halfway across the room when she sees him, though she only looks at him from the corner of her eye and then brings her attention back to the bar top. She doesn’t say anything when he stops, hovering over the stool next to her as though it might burn him if he sits down.

“I’m sorry I ruined your wedding.”

She shrugs, “I think I did that.”

He sighs, sits down on the stool, orders a beer for himself, and only after he has taken a long sip does she finally speak again.

“Why didn’t you come back before?”

He looks down, but she’s looking at him, intently waiting for an answer.

“I don’t know.” He says, “So much had changed, and I knew about Ava and I thought you were happy, but from what I knew I didn’t think she would like me and… I was selfish.”

He watches her for a reaction, but frankly she doesn’t give much of one. She nods, minutely, and takes another sip of her beer.

“I um… I don’t know what you want-”

“I don’t want anything.” He says, quickly, and ok, that’s a lie. He wants to go back to the Waverider, he wants to see about their future, he wants her having called off her wedding to mean something but… But it’s been five years, and things have changed.

“What do you want?” He asks, and she picks at the label of her bottle, thoughtfully.

“I want some time.” She eventually answers before smirking to herself. “Even though that’s the last thing I ever thought I’d be asking for when I imagined you coming back.”

He snickers, and although he wants to he doesn’t make any snide comment on how she’s thought about him coming back.

“But just some time, and… I don’t know what your plans are living with Lisa and her kid but, if you want, we could use you back on the ship.”

“Hm…” He hums, pretending to think. “Travel through time or continue teaching first grade math while sleeping in a closet with a cat?” He weighs the options and she laughs, taking another sip of her drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just one chapter to go!!!!


	16. April 20th-April 21st, 2021

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I had two very different ideas for the final chapter and I decided the best way to cover them both would be adding one more chapter to the story!

It makes sense that with the wedding called off people want to know why. Leonard can understand that, and while he doesn’t particularly have a problem with the truth coming out that he chose the worst timing in the world to show up alive he still wishes that truth wouldn’t have certain consequences. Consequences like Raymond finding out and wanting to see him.

“What did you think was gonna happen?” Mick scoffs as the two of them make their way down the street towards Stein’s house. “You were dead for five years.”

He wants to point out that he was only quote-unquote “dead” for four years, and simply stayed out of almost everyone’s way for the fifth. But he supposes Mick’s point still stands and no technicality of where he actually was throughout last year is going to get him out of this.

He supposes this is for the best anyway. Sara invited the current Legends team and it will probably be easier to meet them in Stein’s living room as opposed to on the ship. He can’t imagine it won’t be awkward to some degree anyway, as these are people who have been and are friends with Ava, have served under Ava as a co-captain; he gets the feeling that no matter where he meets them it won’t go over well.

So maybe Raymond’s presences won’t be so horrible after all.

Seriously, what kind of Twilight Zone world did he wake up in a year ago?

He shares a glance with Mick as they approach the door. There’s a sort of solace on his friend’s face that Leonard finds he’s grateful for. He’d never admit it but with how bad this could potentially go he’s a little worried.

Mick opens the door without knocking and immediately the sound of several conversations coming from the house’s front room fills Leonard’s ears. There are shouts too, of the high-pitched and giggly nature.

That much is enough to put him somewhat at ease. It’s an assurance that there is someone else here for people to have their eyes on. Of course one of these giggling voices belongs to Noah, and she comes peeling around the corner into the hall and runs right out in front of him with a little boy toddling on her heels; Ronnie, Leonard assumes.

Noah skids to a halt in front of him and Mick, Ronnie stumbling behind her as he hurries to stop.

She blinks at him and Mick, looking up at them blankly, before she finally points to Mick.

“Is this Mick?” She asks, and Leonard blinks, not entirely sure why she’s interested.

“Yes.”

“Did he hit you?”

And suddenly it makes sense, and while Mick looks all sorts of confused Leonard snickers.

“He did, but-”

But nothing, that’s all Noah needs to hear. She winds up her feet and delivers a hard kick to Mick’s shin, an angry little pout on her face.

“Hitting isn’t nice!” She informs Mick, and then she runs off quick as she came, little Ronnie toddling after her.

Mick glowers at him while he snickers, but the moment of comic relief is soon over as the kids little race through the living room means there are already plenty of eyes watching the doorway, and the rest follow suit when he and Mick enter.

Leonard has wished he could disappear from a lot of places throughout his life, and this one cracks the top ten, probably even the top five.

Leonard catches sight of Sara right away. She’s over sitting on the couch between Kendra, who is holding a baby balanced on her knee, and a goth girl about Jax’s age. Sin, if he’s remembering correctly. She sees him too, and she nods. They’ll talk, here, but not yet. First…

“Snart!”

First, he has to say hello to Raymond.

Ok, this is now in the top three places he’s wished he could disappear from.

He humors Raymond as he comes and pulls him into a hug, and while most of the others in the room take the opportunity to get back to their conversations the tension is still very much there.

But now it’s a little less, and that makes it bearable.

Raymond is still grinning like the big dolt he is as he releases him from the hug, maybe more than usual, if such a thing is even possible.

“It’s so good to see you!” Raymond exclaims; a hand still clasped on Leonard’s shoulder. “I want to hear everything since you’ve been back, but first, you need to meet my wife. Come on.”

He doesn’t get much of a chance to try dodging the request, as Raymond grabs him by the wrist and starts leading him through the crowded room. He shoots a pleading glance over to Lisa who stifles a laugh behind her hand, and promptly tucks herself further into Ramon’s side whilst talking with Mona and internally Leonard scoffs, so much for the two of them being “just friends.”

“Nora.”

A short woman with dark black hair turns at the sound of Raymond’s voice. She’s over with Jax on the sidelines of the room, and Leonard can’t help but to notice her sizable mid-section.

“Nora.” Raymond repeats, “This is Leonard Snart.”

It should be noted that Leonard can tell right off the bat that Nora’s smile is fake. That’s fair, more than fair actually. Mona had warned him that Raymond’s wife Nora is one of Ava’s closest friends, and it’s evident by the sheer lack of glowing stupidity in her eyes that she is far less idealistic than her husband. Good, Raymond needs that.

He on the other hand needs to not let it intimidate him.

“Nice to meet you.” He says, holding out a hand that he is admittedly surprised to see her take.

“You too.” She very clearly is forcing the words as much as the smile. “Ray’s told me a lot about you.”

Of course he has, well hopefully that will turn out to be for the best.

In any case Raymond starts babbling about how he and Nora met, which evidently the first time was when the Legends were on a mission to help Nora’s past self when she was fourteen and based on the way she groans Leonard is going to assume she has asked Raymond before to not lead with that detail when telling this story.

The story is a long and detailed one, Leonard wouldn’t expect anything less from Raymond, but while he is grateful to be held captive in one corner of the room and able to avoid meeting the new team for awhile longer he knows it is only delaying the inevitable.

Nora must see his gnawing anxiety getting worse and so to either punish him or put him out of his misery she quietly interrupts Ray and tells him she needs to go sit down, and she would appreciate very much if he would go with her.

“Oh, sure. I’ll talk to you later Snart.” Raymond hastily excuses himself before allowing his wife to lead him off.

He sighs, and no sooner has he gotten that breath out than he’s approached by one of the new Legends: the hippie. Behrad.

“Hey,” The kid says, his arms folded and his lips turned downwards in an-almost frown. “Sara says you’re coming aboard?”

His eyes dart around, looking for Sara, and while he does see her she isn’t nearby; he’s on his own here.

“Yeah.” He drawls, “I know I’ve been gone awhile, and my timing couldn’t be worse-”

“But where else were you supposed to go.” Behrad finishes, and if Leonard didn’t know better he would say it sounds like he understands. Or, at the very least, he is trying to.

That is more than Leonard was expecting to get from any of the new Legends, and so with a hesitance he finds himself nodding.

It must be the right course of action, though, because Behrad relaxes and holds out a hand.

“Behrad Tarazi.”

Len eyes the hand, but he takes it. “Leonard Snart.”

Behrad’s mouth quirks into a bit of a smirk as they shake hands.

“You’re timing does suck,” he admits, and somehow that breaks the tension. Leonard is able to agree, and ask Behrad about the new team and get a real sense of where he’s standing getting back on the ship.

It sounds like for the most part the team is cautious about him. They trust Sara’s judgment and have agreed to try and keep an open mind about him, though he has a sneaking suspicion that they only came to that decision after a threat or two from Mick. By the end of the conversation he thinks he’ll be fine. Maybe at first things will be rocky, but he has a confidence that maybe, just maybe, he’ll be able to find a place for himself again.

* * *

“No!!!” Noah whines the next morning, hugging onto Leonard’s leg and adamantly refusing to let go. “I don’t want you to go!!”

“Noah we talked about this.” Lisa says with a roll of her eyes, but an amused smirk on her face all the same. “Lenny wasn’t coming back to live with us no matter what. He was either gonna stay here or go back to his friends.”

Over Noah’s head Leonard raises an eyebrow at his sister, silently teasing her for being so firm in kicking him out of her apartment.

Of course, that wasn’t really the plan. The actual agreement was a lot more fluid; if he came clean to the rest of the Legends and ultimately things didn’t work out and he decided not to join them he would have likely gone back to Gotham. However they didn’t need Noah knowing that, so they told her he would likely stay in Central City. It would be easier to explain to her a sudden falling through of plans than a sudden decision to leave.

“But it’s gonna be harder to call him!” Noah near cries. They can’t explain time travel to her, so they’ve opted for “Lenny’s friends travel a lot” and very bad cell service. Not the most convincing lie, but she’s six.

Leonard chuckles and gently detaches her from his leg, squatting down to her height.

“I know, but you have that special video phone I gave you and Lisa, it works better than a lot of cell phones. I’ll call you guys as often as I can.”

Behind her he can see Lisa fixing him with a “you better” look. She’s already given him the lecture; if he dies out there again she’ll kill him.

Noah looks to be partially convinced, though she is still pouting as she locks her little arms around his neck in a hug.

“Keep Lucky off my bed, ok?” He asks and she giggles into his shoulder.

“Ok.”

He grins, and when he stands back up Lisa has moved closer, now standing just next to Noah and looking at him with fearful tears in her eyes despite the small smile on her face.

“Be careful out there Jerk, I mean it.”

He snickers, “I know you do.”

Her smile grows a little, and then she’s wrapping him in a rare hug. He returns the gesture, his arm securing firmly around her waist.

“Tell Ramon I’ll be coming back for him if he hurts you.” He whispers and she snorts against him.

“He’d be buried before you got here.”

He hums as he pulls away, glad to hear that.

“Love you Trainwreck.”

* * *

Mona lets out a long sigh of relief as she finally closes her apartment door behind her. That was quite the weekend.

She had figured when she got the invitation months ago that Sara and Ava’s wedding would be a big event, but she hadn’t been planning on any of what actually went down. She hadn’t been planning on Mick showing up to her apartment to bring her to Central City three days early and bringing her to his old friend with a history with Sara. She wasn’t expecting to learn so much about who Sara used to be before Ava entered the picture. Somehow she had never given much thought to what the Legends were like before she knew them, back when they were still getting to know each other. She had never considered the possibility that there had been such a tragic love story…

She gasps, her eyes lighting up and her mind suddenly racing. She hurries to kick off her shoes and makes a b-line for her laptop still resting on her coffee table where she left it before Mick abducted her without leaving her time to properly pack a bag. She opens it up and instead of letting her rough draft of another Buck story get her down she opens a fresh document.

_Chapter One: The Return_

_Five years could be a long time, especially when you’re dead. Not that Daniel was dead of course, but as far as the world was concerned he might as well be. As far as Charlotte was concerned, he was._


	17. June 22nd, 2024

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Captain Canary fluff we waited this entire story for is here!!!!

As the morning light invades his eyes and prompts them to open Leonard smiles to himself. He always likes when they’re able to stay overnight in a time and wake up to a natural sunrise. The ship’s day and night cycles work just fine, but there’s something about the warmth of actual morning sunlight that he appreciates when he can get it.

Of course, he is never unappreciative waking up next to Sara.

He lets his eyes drift over to her. She’s lying on her side facing him, her eyes closed and one arm slung lazily over him. She’s the picture of peace, and yet he knows that as soon as he starts to move she’ll wake.

He braces for that, allowing himself one more minute to watch her before he brings a hand up and gently lays it over the one she has resting at his side. Sara huffs in her sleep at the contact, starting to wake, but he doesn’t let it deter him yet. He starts to sit up and slide her arm from him, taking the hand Gideon returned to him three years ago and running his fingers lightly over her hairline.

“Shh… Go back to sleep Canary.” He whispers to her, “I’ve gotta get out of here.”

“Mph.” She grunts lowly, but relinquishes her hold on him and allows him to slip out of the bed.

He snickers as she buries her head deeper into her pillow, and because he can’t help himself he leans over and presses a kiss to her hair.

“I’ll see you later.” He promises, and when she starts to raise her head he gently puts the tips of his fingers to the back of it to discourage her. “Sorry Assassin, but we are not starting off today on the wrong side of a superstition.”

The sound she makes against her pillow is almost inaudible, but he can tell it’s a laugh.

“Then get out of here Crook.” She murmurs, “Before I drag you back.”

He chuckles, presses one more kiss to the very top of her head, and then only pauses long enough to grab his clothes from the closet before finally leaving.

* * *

After Leonard leaves their room Sara can’t get back to sleep. Maybe she could’ve if he had actually left right away like they had talked about, but he just couldn’t help himself to a goodbye kiss; not that he let her have a chance at one.

Oh well, it probably is for the best that she let him slip out without seeing him, even if she did hear his voice and feel his lips; nothing in the superstition about that.

She rolls onto her back and looks up at the ceiling with a lazy smile on her face. This isn’t the first time she’s woken up in this room on a day like today, but this time it feels so different. It feels more real.

Last time, and granted last time she had Leonard’s sudden return hanging over her head, but last time there had been a nagging in the back of her mind that she was making a mistake. Last time a part of her had known even before she came to the final decision that the day was not going to go as it had been planned to for months. This time there is none of that. There are nerves, sure, but they’re the excited type of nerves. She hasn’t felt those kinds of nerves in a long time, not since she and Leonard first decided to give things a shot.

Thinking about it in detail makes her smile even more and so she gets up, figuring Leonard should be well and off the ship by now so she should be able to leave the room and get started on her day without risk of running into him.

And if for whatever reason she does run into him, well, they’ve made it this far without the universe ripping him away from her again.

* * *

Leonard is completely unsurprised to see the wide grin on Stein’s face when he arrives at the house, and he is equally unsurprised that the older man pulls him into a hug. Normally Stein is one of the first to understand and respect that he is not a hugger, but occasionally circumstances override that understanding and, well, if there were ever going to be a day for that it should be today.

“I was worried you might get distracted this morning.” Stein says with a wink, and Leonard smirks; sometimes he forgets The Professor can tap into a dirtier part of his mind if he so chooses.

“I almost did.” He admits, following Stein into the living room, only to find himself quickly enveloped in another hug; this time by Clarissa.

Ugh, today is going to be a very huggy day.

“Congratulations!” She cheers as she wraps her arms tightly around him like an excited boa constrictor. “Oh, aren’t you excited?”

He smirks, and she finally lets him go, though her hands never quite leave his arms.

“If I wasn’t I wouldn’t be here.”

He hears a snort of amusement from behind Clarissa and looks past her to see Mick standing from the doorway to the kitchen, dressed like he would be for any other day.

“I thought you stayed at Ali’s last night?” He questions, to which his friend merely shrugs.

“Her and Lita headed out early this morning, something about getting hair done. Figured I might as well come here.”

Leonard nods, and that’s all he has time to do before Clarissa starts ushering him deeper into the house, past the living room and into the kitchen where Raymond, Jax, Sin, and Jax and Sin’s daughter Martina are all sitting around the table eating breakfast.

“Snart!” Raymond cheerfully announces his presence for him, great.

Jax looks to him with a knowing smirk, as does Sin, while their daughter is too busy smashing scrambled eggs all over her chin to notice him.

“Raymond.” He acknowledges, nodding towards Martina. “Where’s your rugrat?”

The real question should be how many rugrats does Raymond have today, as it isn’t unusual for him and Nora to drag one or two of her charges along to “family” events.

“Nora’s bringing her to the ship with her.” Raymond supplies around a forkful of eggs.

Sin looks over to Jax when she hears the answer, “Guess I’m taking her then?”

Jax shrugs, “Up to you.”

Sin seems to think about it for a minute, Jax watching her the whole time, but her answer is already clear on her face.

“Yeah I’ll take her.” She decides, as expected. “Let her meet another kid.”

“Two other kids.” Mick corrects as he helps himself to a plate of sausage and eggs, which Leonard has a sneaking suspicion is not his first. “Amaya’s there too with Esi.”

Len snickers, just picturing Sara and the other girls trying to get ready with not one, not two, but three toddlers to keep track of. He’s sure the ship will be all sorts of rearranged by the end of it.

Oh well, for now that can be the last thing on his mind. Instead he is going to follow Mick’s lead and grab a plate while the breakfast he’s sure Clarissa spent a week planning out is still hot.

* * *

“Ellie no!”

Sara can’t help but to laugh as Nora pulls her daughter away from Zari’s make-up bag, again.

“I told you, this is your make-up.” She continues, pushing into Ellie’s little hands an eye-shadow palate that is made of plastic and nothing else.

Ellie is at least interested enough to look at it and be distracted when Noah reaches over and pulls her back to the corner the little girls have claimed for themselves, partially under Lisa’s supervision.

While the sight is every bit adorable as it is amusing and Sara would love to continue watching Noah try and keep control of Ellie and Esi – and Lisa try keeping control of Noah - she soon finds her head being tilted away to the side by a hand on her chin.

“Hold still.” Laurel scolds her gently and Sara hums, looking up and letting her sister position her head however she feels she needs it.

“Close your eyes.” Laurel instructs and Sara does as asked, content to listen to the sounds of Zari offering to put glitter on the little girls’ faces.

She still has her eyes closed when she hears the door open and new footsteps come into the bathroom.

“I miss anything important?” Sin’s voice asks and Sara cracks open the eye Laurel isn’t working on, grinning when she sees that Sin has Martina balanced on her hip.

“Nope.” She answers, “How are the boys doing?”

“They’re fine, not getting ready yet but that’s what happens when Clarissa knows people are coming over in the morning and makes breakfast.”

Sara can’t help but laugh, even if doing so messes Laurel up.

“As long as they’re dressed in time for the ceremony.” Sara says and Sin laughs.

“I’m sure they will be.”

“They better be.” Zari comments, plugging in her curling iron. “You can’t delay an outdoor wedding very long before you lose the light, and I did not bring my good cameras out of storage to lose the light.”

Sara can hear Laurel rolling her eyes.

“Relax, all your pictures will come out perfect.”

“And there won’t be any bank heists this time?” Zari asks and this time Sara laughs aloud.

None of them have talked much about her almost-wedding to Ava throughout the entire process of planning this one, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still occasional jabs here and there.

Laurel doesn’t look impressed and switches out her eye shadow for lipstick.

“You don’t have any tricks up your sleeve this time?” Sara quietly teases.

“Not unless you need them.” Laurel snarks. “Now stop talking.”

Sara allows herself one more snicker before obeying Laurel’s orders and allowing her to put her lipstick on. She had considered doing her make-up herself, but Zari was adamant that she had to either go to a professional or at least let her bring all her best make-up onto the ship and the bridesmaids and her could all get ready together. The second option seemed a lot more relaxed, and relaxed is all she wants today. They’re having the wedding in a park on the edge of Central City and currently the Waverider is cloaked at less than fifty feet from where the ceremony is set to be. This way they’ll be able to go right from the ship and into the ceremony with no room for anything to go wrong in between. Nice and easy.

A knock on the door pulls Sara from her thoughts.

“That’s probably Zari.” Amaya says, pulling Esi onto her lap.

Zari growls and sets down her curling iron, stepping over to the door with her hair half done. “I told her to be here bright and early, she and Nate don’t need to-”

Zari cuts herself off with the whooshing of the door, and looking past Laurel to see what has caused the abrupt silence Sara can see why not only Zari, but everyone else as well, has stopped.

Ava.

For a minute Sara swears she forgets how to breathe.

By the looks of things Ava might be having a similar problem. She’s frozen in the doorway, her eyes taking in the crowded bathroom and looking at everyone until her eyes finally meet Sara’s, and then they seem to fly to Zari.

“Uh… Can I… Can I talk to Sara for a minute?”

Sara still isn’t totally confident that she’s breathing when Zari looks back at her, but she finds herself nodding anyway. She doesn’t miss how the others all look to each other before they slowly get to their feet - Sin, Amaya, Lisa, and Nora hastily gathering up their children - and they go.

Ava steps into the room as Laurel - the last of the group - passes her and then the door closes them in.

The two of them stare at each other for a moment. This isn’t the first time they’ve seen each other in the past three years, though the number of those instances is low.

“So… Hey.” Ava says, awkwardly and a little loudly, not that Sara would ever expect anything different.

“Hey yourself.” She says, standing with her hands on her hips. “I wasn’t sure you’d come.”

“I almost didn’t.” Ava admits with a shrugs. “I was a little surprised you invited me.”

“Well we invited Mona, and Gary, and Nora. All your friends-”

“Right.” Ava says, nodding and scuffing her foot along the floor of the bathroom.

“Not that I don’t want you around during something like this.”

“No, I get it.” Ava says, quickly. “I mean we are still kind of friends, but this specific thing is… A little awkward.”

Sara nods, trying to come up with anything to say to that.

Fortunately, she doesn’t have to.

“Anyway, I um… I actually stopped by to tell you that I’m not going to be able to make it today. Not because of the whole you leaving me thing or anything to do with you actually, but something came up and I felt bad because I already sent you my RSVP and-”

She stops herself, and Sara figures that must be because it’s evident on her face that she’s curious. It’s not that she doesn’t believe Ava, if only because she is a terrible liar and if she were really trying to cover for ditching she would’ve called instead of coming to the ship.

“Um…” Ava starts over after a breath. “I don’t know how much you talk with Lisa, Leonard’s sister.”

“Often enough.” Sara shrugs, “You just passed her coming in.”

“Right.”

“I know you guys were talking at the last two crossovers but I don’t know what about.”

She isn’t sure if Leonard knows either, they had asked once and all Lisa had said before being dragged off by Cisco was it had been a question about Noah.

“Right.” Ava says, “Um, she put me in touch with Noah’s old caseworker and I’ve been in foster training for a few months now. I got a call this morning about a placement…”

Sara grins as Ava trails off, pausing to catch her breath and her shoulders give way to a little bit of relief. Sara knows this Ava. This is Ava when she’s anxious, when she knows her worldview is about to change and she doesn’t yet know how to deal with it, but she knows she desperately wants to find out.

Ava never looked like this when they were supposed to get married.

“Ava that’s great.” She says, taking a step forward. “Also you know the reception will be going all night, so if you get back and your kid feels up for a party, you guys are more than welcome.”

“Thanks Sara.” Ava snorts with a smirk. “And congratulations. I’m glad you and Leonard are happy.”

“Thank you.” She says, “Now come here, give me a hug and go. Go be a kickass foster mom.” She opens up her arms and Ava laughs before she steps into the embrace.

* * *

Standing at the front of the ceremony Leonard really can’t believe he’s made it here, and he’s sure many of the others share that sentiment; at least half the people he’s seen today have told him so.

“Well Leonard.” Stein, one of the many people to have said he can’t believe they’re here, pulls him from his thoughts. “Are you ready?”

He smirks, and takes a quick glance out at the crowd gathered. Almost all of their friends are seated in the chairs they have set up in the park’s field, the only ones who are unaccounted for being members of the wedding party.

“Ready.”

That’s all he needs to say, because with a grin Stein nods over to his wife, and she hits play on the recording of the wedding march. The music plays out over the speakers that Cisco very meticulously set up. Laurel comes down the aisle first with Sara’s mother, this time around Sara had felt more comfortable asking her to be a bridesmaid but there were also other people she would’ve rather asked. But with Quentin giving her away they needed someone to walk Dinah down the aisle, and Laurel was more than happy to oblige.

Next down the aisle comes Sin and Jax, the start of the bridesmaids and the groomsmen. After them is Zari 1.0 and, _sigh,_ Raymond. Next comes Amaya and, _bigger sigh,_ Barry. Leonard really didn’t have many tolerable options when picking his groomsmen. Oh well, that’s what he gets for surrounding himself with idiots.

The next down the aisle are the maid of honor and best man; Lisa and Mick. After them it’s Sara’s turn, and Leonard’s eyes are glued to the paper walls they have at the end of the aisle long before Lisa and Mick even get close to the front.

He gasps when he sees her.

He had known she would look beautiful, she always does, but this is something else. She had warned him she wouldn’t be wearing white; she’s no virgin and every white dress she tried on felt like some fancy variation of her suit. She had neglected to tell him what color she would be wearing, and even if she had told him he knows he wouldn’t have been able to imagine this.

She’d gone with a champagne color that glitters all the way up from the bottom of the skirt to the studded straps securing the top and outlining the V-neck. The sparkles catch easily in the sun, and he is fairly certain Zari 2.0 is either praising the pictures she’s getting because of them or cursing them. It’s a little hard to tell, especially when he manages to tear his gaze away from Sara long enough to see she is dabbing at her eyes with tissues pulled from Constantine’s coat pocket.

His eyes go back to Sara just in time for her to reach him at the alter, letting go of her father’s arm and taking his hands in place.

“Crook.” She whispers, a bright smile on her face.

“Assassin.” He returns, and he is well aware of Stein watching them and waiting to get on with things.

Well, he isn’t the only one.

“Gathered family and friends,” Stein starts “I have been asked two favors today. The first of which being would I please officiate this ceremony, it goes without saying that I accepted.”

The crowd laughs, Leonard does too, but he’s hoping that is the end of Stein’s attempt at jokes.

“The second was would I please keep it brief.”

Nope, not even close to the end of his jokes.

“Truly, everyone, I believe Sara and Leonard’s story speaks for itself. They are two people who found each other, and have continued to find each other, no matter the circumstances that are thrown their way. Many of us know better than most the darkness this world can bring, and Leonard and Sara know that darkness better than even most of us. Yet through everything they have always been able to find a light in one another. Mr. Snart, Ms. Lance.”

He pauses, smiling to himself, like he is relishing the last time in which he will be able to say that pairing of names.

“I think I speak for everyone here when I say with the upmost confidence that your life together will be long and happy, because the two of you have proven time and again that you will accept nothing less.”

Sappy, and Leonard finds he is dying to know how many variations of that speech Stein wrote out, as well as how much input Mick granted himself. But it doesn’t matter right now, all that matters is it’s time for him and Sara to exchange rings and vows.

At Stein’s prompting Mick hands him the rings and he in turn hands them to Leonard and Sara. They keep their vows short, and among the usual promises they add in “even when death does us part”, which gets a laugh.

“Now.” Stein says at the end of the vows. “It is my greatest pleasure to pronounce the two of you husband and wife. If you would please…”

Happily.

Leonard pulls Sara in close as her arms wind around his neck, meeting him halfway for a kiss that is accompanied by a round of applause from all their friends, and Leonard can’t help smiling when they break apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say thank you so much to everyone who has been commenting throughout this story. Especially on Chapter 15, because that was a rough one and I am so grateful to everyone who had my back through that. A special shout out to ColdFan who has been commenting on EVERY chapter!!!!! Thank you so much!!!! I've had so much fun writing this story and am so grateful to everyone whose been reading it!


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